In this chapter, I turn to the agency and strategic behaviour of the Lebanese state in the field of security and migration management (after having focused on the humanitarian field in Chap. 5 ). In Chap. 4 , I mentioned that European border interventions have promoted the paradigm of migration management, with a selection and exclusion ordeal at odds with the paradigm of refugee protection. I argued that this conception has been instrumentalised by Lebanese state officials for their own benefits: by embracing key principles of border management such as the distinction between refugee and migrants and the ‘sedentary bias’ (the idea that refugees first belong to their state of origin and that mobility is an abnormality), they have legitimised their policies of increased control, with border restrictions and a new visa system for Syrians. Ultimately, the Lebanese authorities’ overt securitisation of Syrian mobility even comes in contradiction with the paradigm of migration management (as the latter entails a balance between security and humanitarian considerations). This chapter also shows how Lebanese authorities have exerted power leverage over the UNHCR’s own process of securitisation of refugees, influencing this process to their advantage by pushing the agency to share biodata of refugees collected during the registration process. This provides a prime example of how the UNHCR has lost control of its own securitisation logics to the benefits of the Lebanese authorities but at the expense of refugee rights. This research thus contributes to the literature on power dynamics between migration IOs and Southern recipients of funds, showing how the former come to support the personal agenda of the latter in contradiction with a mere top-down approach.