Life in an Immigration Detention Centre is not life at all, it is waiting. Waiting and fear. Fear of deportation, fear of losing your direction while your life is limited to the four walls of the cell, fear of a future that could surely not be worse. The testimonies of former inmates of the Immigrant Detention Centre (CIE) at Zona Franca, Barcelona, offer us a glimpse of the reality of these illegal, covert prisons.