This chapter examines the emergence and entrenchment of a humanitarian crisis at the Lithuanian-Belarusian border since 2021, arguing that the so-called migration crisis can rather be understood as a crisis of reception, constructed through securitising discourse and political instrumentalisation. It explores how migrants were strategically framed as threats, invaders, criminals, or disease vectors, within a broader narrative of “hybrid warfare,” allowing for the normalisation of extraordinary measures such as arbitrary detention, systematic pushbacks, and the invocation of a protracted state of emergency. The chapter interrogates the discursive and material dimensions of this border spectacle, situating Lithuania’s response within EU-level dynamics of sovereignty games and the erosion of legal protections for displaced people. It considers how populist narratives and punitive affect were mobilised to legitimise repression, and how racialised hierarchies shaped the treatment of migrants. The chapter concludes that Lithuania’s response exemplifies a broader European shift towards securitised and exclusionary migration governance, wherein human rights obligations are rendered contingent, and state violence is discursively justified through the language of defence and exception.