The European Union is facing an unprecedented influx of immigrants, which seems to be putting pressure on one of the cornerstones of the European Project: the free movement of people due to the abolishment of border controls. Driven by fears of the potential “crimmigrant other” many European countries are in fact reintroducing some form of border security. This lecture will discuss the current European refugee crisis through the lens of border control in an area that was meant to be borderless. In doing so, we will also address the broader development of securitization of migration control in Europe and – based on an extensive case study on border control in the Netherlands – the challenges that street level border control officials have to deal with in this ‘unprecedented’ time.