The north-eastern Aegean island of Chios became renown as a transit zone and a welcoming place for thousands of asylum seekers, who were passing through the island on their way to Northern Europe, in the summer of 2015. However, their movement was put into a halt after the EU-Turkey Statement of March 2016, which led to thousands of asylum seekers getting trapped in the Greek islands. A number of contentious events followed in Chios, including a port occupation by asylum seekers, a massive demonstration organized by locals, and violent xenophobic attacks against the asylum seekers. Therefore, this paper examines the hypothesis that the EU-Turkey Statement led to the rise of xenophobia in Chios. It also documents and analyses some of the key events that followed, taking into consideration the concepts of border regime and border externalization, based on a mixed qualitative approach including data from the local press, in-depth semi-structured interviews, and participatory observation.