As the European Union seeks to further fortify its external borders, its Home Affairs Council met in Luxembourg on June 8 to finalize a common policy on establishing controversial “return hubs” in third countries under an overhauled Return Regulation framework. But as EU interior ministers pushed to export asylum processing outside European borders by 2027, the real-world consequences of Europe’s externalization agenda were exploding on the streets of Tripoli, Libya—one of the primary transit routes for migrants seeking to reach Europe. Outraged local residents blockaded the entrances to the UNHCR headquarters and IOM offices with mounds of sand, protesting what they view as a deliberate attempt to turn their country into a permanent containment zone for Europe’s rejected migrants. The timing is far from coincidental: to make these return centers operational, European policymakers rely heavily on a fractured North Africa to absorb the human pressure. This raises a central, uncomfortable question that Brussels continuously avoids: does the European Union actually prefer a politically divided, institutionally weak Libya, precisely because a fragmented state is easier to manipulate into serving as Europe’s default border police? 

To understand the rage that brought trucks of sand to the gates of UN agencies in Al-Sarraj and Janzour, west of Tripoli, one must look at how ordinary Libyans perceive the mechanics of European policy on the ground. For over a decade, successive deals between Brussels, individual EU member states, and various Libyan factions have effectively turned the country into a northern buffer zone. Through millions of euros in funding for the Libyan Coast Guard and interdiction programs, the EU has successfully forced tens of thousands of intercepted migrants back onto Libyan shores, where they remain trapped in a legal and operational limbo. To a public already grappling with fifteen years of political fragmentation, hyperinflation, and decaying public infrastructure, the expanding presence of nearly a million migrants—and Europe’s relentless push for external processing hubs—does not look like humanitarian management. Instead, it is........

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