NGOs accuse Greek authorities of violating rights of asylum seekers in Samos closed facili

On January 21, a report was published alleging that Greek authorities have installed a “surveillance infrastructure” in the facility for asylum seekers on Samos which includes the removal of phones, the use of drones, CCTV, AI-driven systems and biometric scanning. This, the report says, amounts to a “covert operation against asylum seekers and the invasive use of technology in the Samos Closed Controlled Access Center (CCAC)”.

The report is a result of a year-long research project by two NGOs: I Have Rights (a human rights organization based in Samos) and Border Violence Monitoring Network (a coalition of European grassroots organizations dedicated to exposing pushbacks, human rights abuses and violence against people on the move within Europe’s borders).

The authors spoke to 59 current and former residents of the CCAC as well as seven people who work, or have worked, there. Seventy-eight percent of the respondents were male. They were aged between 18 and 64 and came from 17 nationalities, including Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Syria.

‘You come out like a washed soul’

The Samos CCAC “resembles a prison,” according to the report, which describes the facility as consisting of accommodation and services housed in containers, separated by checkpoints, and enclosed by multiple layers of barbed wire fencing. The CCAC is heavily policed by Greek police, border force and a private security firm operated by G4S. The camp was already described as a ‘dystopian nightmare’ by the human rights organization Amnesty International in August 2024.

One person interviewed commented, “I was running for freedom and came to a prison.” Another added: “You go in there a normal person but after everything that happens you come out like a washed soul.”

Another respondent asked: “How come in a camp there are so many cameras? […] The high level of control to enter and leave. I really didn’t like that […] The reason I don’t leave to another European country is I don’t want to experience a camp again. It was the worst experience.”

Another, referring to the drones, said they thought it was inhumane. “It limits your freedom, even your movement is limited.”

Another added that they believed being in the camp was “a punishment for having come illegally.”

Cameras and drones

The report reveals that almost all respondents confirmed there were cameras all around the facilities. Some respondents said that although they couldn’t see cameras in private spaces, there were some within containers in public spaces like kitchens. Perhaps because of a lack of capacity, some people claimed they had to sleep in these pubic areas for weeks or months at a time.

“For one and a half months, we were in a public space with no bathroom, in a very difficult situation…I noticed there were a lot of cameras, you couldn’t understand why.”

Another respondent said they were forced to sleep in a kitchen area for two months. “Cameras were inside and when there were fights the police still did not know who was involved.”

Others reported hearing and/or seeing drones flying above the facility.

In June 2022, the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency already raised “serious concerns about the necessity and proportionality of installing CCTV in areas used to accommodate people,” states the report. The organization I Have Rights reportedly obtained this information through a freedom of information (FOI) request.

Read Also
Greece to expand security and surveillance at border with Turkey

The issue of consent

In 2021, information also obtained by a FOI request, from the Ministry of Migration and Asylum claimed that they did not directly monitor accommodation areas via CCTV. In 2024, the Greek Ministry again underlined that there are “no cameras elsewhere where privacy is expected, such as individual offices, leisure areas, toilet facilities etc.”

However, the report alleges that due to “severe overcrowding,” people often do end up sleeping in “corridors and canteens” where cameras are present.

The EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency advised the Greek Ministry back in 2022 to install visible signs to inform residents and staff. In one response since the center was set up, the Greek authorities said that those entering the center signed consent forms, however questions have been raised about the lack of choice for people at the center, suggesting that if they are staying there, they have to sign the form.

Read Also
Greece: Migration ministry fined for data breaches in migrant camps

Removal of phones

Eighty-eight percent of respondents reported having their phones removed upon arrival at the Samos CCAC, with phones returned within a day to a week. Some said they knew their phones would be taken, so they erased their messages.

Some reported that people wearing police uniforms removed their phones, others said it was people who worked in the camp. Still others were unsure who the people were. Sometimes the removal happened when the migrants were found by police, at other times they claimed it happened on the bus to the camp, or on arrival as they were registering.

Many believed their phones had been accessed and some reported the systems seemed “slowed down” or “heavier to use.” Over half of the respondents expressed fear or concern about privacy violations. Some were fearful that the phone contents might have negative consequences on their asylum claim.

The report authors point out that for people on the move, the phone provides a lifeline of connection to loved ones back home. The removal of the phone for some also intensified feelings of distrust and insecurity against the host country and Europe. For some who said they had to wait for days or even weeks for their phone to be returned, the sense of isolation and inability to contact anyone outside the center must have been difficult, suggest the report’s authors.

Legal basis for removal ‘unclear’

Under EU and national law, police require a specific suspicion before they can remove someone’s phone and attempt to access their data. The report states that the legal basis for the removal of migrants’ phones on entering the Samos CCAC is “unclear.”

The authors say they wrote to the Greek police on Samos on May 24, 2024, asking for clarification of the legal basis for the removal of phones. In mid-June, the police responded and denied the practice.

However, a month after that, a fundamental rights monitor at Frontex informed I Have Rights by email that the removal of phones is “prescribed in the operation plan agreed between Frontex and Greece and is covered by national law.”

In January 2025, one of the interviewees told the report’s authors that “three young Syrian asylum seekers interviewed in Samos said that their phones, as well as those of everyone they knew, had been seized by the authorities and returned later without explanation or any suspicion of them being involved in criminal activities.” The group claimed, “they were never told why their phones had been taken, did not sign any consent forms, and were not told when their devices might be returned.”

Read Also
Greece: At least eight migrants drown off Samos

Data protection not implemented despite order

The CCAC in Samos, which currently hosts some 4,300 people, according to the report, opened in 2021. Centers like it, which offer detention and reception facilities together, may be rolled out more widely across the EU once the New Pact on Migration and Asylum is implemented by 2026.

In April 2024, the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum was fined by the Hellenic Data Protection Authority (HDPA) for “violating data protection laws in the CCAC.” The fine was the “largest fine in Greek history,” according to the report, and the Ministry was ordered to act.

The NGOs claim that despite this order, their report shows that the HDPA’s recommendations were not implemented.

Ella Dodd, Advocacy and Strategy Coordinator at I Have Rights underlined that “people seeking safety on our island are not criminals. The EU and Greek authorities promised that the CCAC would be a model, humane facility. Yet reports both from people on the move and workers attest to the inhumanity of the structure and its panoptic surveillance architecture.”

Read Also

Greece: One migrant dies and 30 rescued off Samos

‘Not conducive to wellbeing’

An EU Ombudsman report in 2023 found that “the external fencing and surveillance infrastructure do not create a physical environment conducive to wellbeing.” They added, “It is questionable how respect for human dignity and protection of the best interest of the child and of vulnerable individuals can be ensured if residents are forced to stay in such an environment.”

According to the report authors, people on the move arrive in the Samos CCAC and remain there until the identification procedures have been completed. They say there is no full-time doctor employed at the site and that “vulnerability assessments usually do not take place, if at all, until many weeks after arrival.” Access to psychologists is also “highly restricted.”

Petra Molnar, a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in migration and human rights writing in 2020 for the Refugee Law Lab said she believed that the use of technology being used in the migration context is creating uncertainty regarding legal responsibilities and means of redress.

According to Molnar, “The creation of legal black holes in migration management technologies is very deliberate to allow for the creation of opaque zones of technological experimentation that would not be allowed to occur in other spaces.”

Reactions to claims

The NGOs claim that because the Samos CCAC is part of a wider EU plan to roll out similar structures under the new Migration and Asylum pact, to be implemented by 2026, the Samos CCAC “holds strategic relevance as the EU’s testing ground for its future bloc-wide migration policies.”

InfoMigrants contacted the Greek authorities and the European Commission that provides funding for the Samos facility, in relation to the report and asked them a series of questions, as well as for a statement regarding the allegations made in the report and asked them to outline the procedure for asylum seekers when they enter the Samos CCAC.

We wrote to the Greek authorities on January 22 and by January 24 had not received a reply. The European Commission has told InfoMigrants they are working on a response and will send it as soon as possible. We delayed publication until today in the hope that we would receive it, but haven’t yet.

We will update this article next week once we have received their response.

Read Also
Greek island camps over capacity after hundreds of migrants rescued