The ancient conception of security and human rights, on the one hand, and restriction and protection, on the other, are two exclusionary perspectives in the handling of international migration, this article argues that they both articulate and feed each other. We explore this articulation from the studies on terrorism, and analyse anti-trafficking and anti-trafficking policies, which are central to regional and international migration agendas. Based on an ethnographic study, we look at the role of trafficking and smuggling of migrants as strategies for the production of ‘risky migration’ and ‘migrant irregularity’ and to justify exceptional measures in times defined as ‘humanitarian crises’. We conclude that the migration policies formulated in the Ecuadorian post-neoliberal period are not entirely autonomous or dissident, but functional to the hegemonic neoliberal regime of global migration control.