German Studies Review 38.2 (2015): 393–405 © 2015 by The German Studies Association. Review Essay The Opaque State: Surveillance and Deportation in the Bundesrepublik Überwachtes Deutschland. Post- und Telefonüberwachung in der alten Bundesrepublik. By Josef Foschepoth. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Pp. 378. Cloth €34.95. ISBN 978-3525300411. Dark Territory in the Information Age: Learning from the West German Census Controversies of the 1980s. By Matthew G. Hannah. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. Pp. xviii + 276. Cloth $45.00. ISBN 978-1409408130. Gespenster der Migration. Zur Genealogie illegaler Einwanderung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. By Serhat Karakayali. Bielefeld: transcript, 2008. Pp. 296. Paper €28.80. ISBN 978-3899428957. Blackbox Abschiebung. Geschichten und Bilder von Leuten, die gerne geblieben wären. By Miltiadis Oulios. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2013. Pp. 482. Paper €20.00. ISBN 978-3518126448. In his study of deportation in contemporary Germany, Militiadis Oulios notes that one of the “un-words of the year” in 2002 was “Ausreisezentrum” (19). The euphemistic term refers to detention facilities where asylum seekers without passports are held until their identities are determined and their deportations completed. Because it is German policy not to deport anyone without a passport, the absence of an identity document leaves them in legal limbo, often for long periods of time. In regular deporta- tion prison (Abschiebehaft), detainees are charged for their days of residence at the rate of a moderately priced hotel, have their biometric data recorded for identiication, and are put on an airplane, either alone or accompanied, and sometimes wearing a so-called “bodycuff” restraining their limbs beneath their clothes. The biometric data is shared through Europe-wide databases to prevent reentry into the Schengen area, leaving what scholars call “data doubles” on government servers. Frozen in physi- cal categories, this digital reduction of the person may inadvertently draw further attention to itself in the context of probabilistic models of “actuarial justice” and discriminatory practices of racial proiling. 1 Since 1993, select German airports also have facilities technically outside of sovereign territory where refugees can be held, and often deported, after expedited trials (298). Oulios refers to all of these sites as the “black boxes of deportation.” He presents them as the built refutation of the