For the Romani families living in Nea Zoi, an informal neighbourhood near Aspropyrgos, Greece, the pre-dawn hum of surveillance drones has become a regular soundtrack to their lives. By daybreak, K-9 units and tactical police have blocked narrow dirt roads, police in riot gear have formed a perimeter around the neighbourhood, and armed officers are breaking through doors to makeshift homes, all under the banner of “public order”.Since late 2025, this routine has repeated with terrifying regularity: at least 76 raids in six months, involving 473 officers, targeting 152 Romani communities across Greece. That amounts to more than one raid a week throughout the country. Documented by the European Roma Rights Centre as the most extensive anti-Roma police operation in decades, these actions are presented by Greek politicians as a tactical response to organised crime. But the pattern of police violence represents something more sinister: a strategic convergence of migration control, border security and domestic policing that criminalises Romani life.In examining the mechanics of the so-called “Operation ENTOS”, meaning “from within”, in the context of other anti-Roma actions in Europe, it becomes clear that Greece is only the sharp edge of a continent-wide shift in policy that treats racialised minorities not as citizens, but as internal threats to be managed …
