municipality of Lesvos with the assistance of numerous local and international NGOs. Hotspots along the EU borders aspire to become sites of order, absolute surveillance and humanitarian care. Hotspots are thus at the heart of what can be proclaimed as the “new frontierization of the border control regime” (Fassin, 2016). Fully implemented, border-crossers will be rapidly identified, properly registered, and competently divided to refugees and deportable subjects. In this essay, we focus on the meso-level of the implementation of border policies on the ground in the Moria hotspot. We leave aside the NGOfication and IGOfication of EU migration management (Cuttitta, 2014; Geiger and Pécoud, 2010) and the perspective of the border-crossers who are subjected to this emerging archipelago of containment and streamlining. As we go on to show, the Moria hotspot retains and reinforces the features of its forerunner registration center, its makeshift character, and the precariousness of its populace. We argue that the hotspot is both a symbol of supreme state and supra-state sovereignty that manifests the increased securitization of borders, and a site where the limits of the EU management of mobility are crucially revealed. These limits are not only a matter of operational insufficiencies (malfunctioning bureaucracies, lack of material resources and personnel) commonly evoked by EU and Greek migration officials. We argue that these limits are entrenched in the enduring ill-treatment of bordercrossers at the gates of Europe. Moreover, the situation resonates the abandonment of border-crossers in a zone of prolonged precariousness and limbo. The new hotspot thus compounds systemic chaos instead of producing legibility and order. * 5 of 13