Within the framework of its migration policies, the European Union (EU) has digitalized border management, turning biometric databases and AI-supported risk identification applications into core components of border security. With this digitalized border model, the EU aims to facilitate the management of migration flows and customs procedures, speed up border crossings, and increase operational efficiency in border security. Integrating technology into migration policy and border management in this way represents an administrative success. However, this technological transformation, through which legal crossings are sustained more systematically, also brings structural problems in its humanitarian and legal dimensions.
Although borders have become digital fortresses, migration demand toward the EU has not diminished; on the contrary, because those who cannot be included in the system resort to more dangerous and illegal routes, it creates a security dilemma within the system. On one side, Europe is trying to streamline bureaucratic procedures and operational activities; on the other, profiles of migrants and asylum seekers rejected by digital systems follow unlawful paths, giving rise to new security threats to Europe.
By gradually making digital applications a fundamental part of the administrative process, the EU replaced the traditional passport stamping practice with a digital model through the Entry/Exit System (EES), which it launched in 2024, making border controls faster and more efficient.[i] This model, in which border controls have moved to biometric databases such as facial recognition systems and fingerprints, was supported in 2025 by the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS).This system enables the European Union to authorize travel electronically, thereby enhancing border security before journeys even begin.[ii] The most recent application of this technological transformation, the EURODAC database, takes Europe’s capacity to process biometric data beyond being merely an administrative mechanism and turns it into a digital surveillance mechanism.[iii]
EURODAC stores the biometric data of irregular migrants and asylum applicants across the continent and can share it with the relevant European institutions when necessary. This vast digital network, operating in coordination, demonstrates that lawful crossings at border gates can be processed quickly. Moreover, this structure, which allows data to be shared within a short time with border protection mechanisms within the Union such as Frontex, increases operational efficiency in Europe’s border management and constitutes an administrative success.
The humanitarian and legal effects of this structural transformation in EU border mechanisms do not advance in step with its success in operational management. Although the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act, which entered into force in August 2024, is grounded in the safe, transparent, and human-rights-respecting use of AI technologies, its use in practice and in ensuring border security creates a legal grey area. Profiles of migrants and asylum seekers are analyzed by algorithms within seconds and classified into risk categories. Due to the automated nature of the system, these classifications are recorded in databases in ways that make them difficult to challenge. Because the risk profiling process is carried out by machines, it conflicts with the presumption of innocence, a fundamental rule of modern law. Consequently, when migrant and asylum applications are entered into the system as high-risk profiles, the applicants become suspects who cannot prove otherwise against AI models. Europe’s new digital border architecture, while consolidating its bureaucratic success by integrating low-risk-profile applications into the system, serves as a technological wall that cannot be contested for those who cannot get in.
Physical barriers such as wire fences and walls are being reduced to the human body with the EU’s digitalizing border policies. Biometric data such as facial recognition and fingerprints have become Europe’s modern borders. Digitalizing border policies face criticism from human rights activists and civil society organizations because of their legal gaps. The collection of biometric data from children as young as six and its registration in the system, and the reduction of border control mechanisms to the child’s body, draw backlash because they run counter to the principle of the best interests of the child.[iv] Furthermore, the absence of an appeal mechanism in the AI-based border control process indicates that legal doors are closing for all migrant applications. As a result, structural security measures have opened up a new field of activity for international criminal organizations and human smuggling networks.
Even though the digitalization of border policies lends speed to the operational process in addressing Europe’s heavy migration intake, it does not fully solve it. Masses who are rejected through legal channels and cannot contest the process may embrace the idea of taking the risks and passing through far more dangerous routes. As digital systems grow stronger, organized crime mechanisms and human smugglers are also adapting to the system. The latest field reports of the European Police Office (EUROPOL) confirm that the EES and EURODAC systems have not ended human smuggling and have instead caused smuggling activities to digitalize as well. Biometric applications lead to more sophisticated forgery methods in the activities of human smuggling networks.[v] The adaptation of illegal methods such as the production of counterfeit chip passports and digital identity theft to the digitalizing border security system has created a new professional field in human smuggling networks. International criminal networks, updating themselves in line with algorithmic border policies, produce dangerous and illegal technological alternatives from which they can profit. Consequently, as border security systems become increasingly technologically sophisticated, illegal methods have also become more professionalized, pushing migrants into a structural deadlock.
The administrative and operational success the EU has achieved in border security through its new digital border architecture does not advance in step with the consequences of processing migrant applications within the system. Conducting border control through technology and algorithms provides efficiency in operational terms. However, the process by which AI-based systems perceive and categorize migrant profiles has eliminated the right to appeal, owing to its mechanical basis. Applications rejected through legal channels have given rise to the possibility that migration flows may fall under the control of illegal, organized crime networks. While digitalizing and tightening border controls on one hand, the EU, on the other, creates a security deadlock for itself as de facto control on the ground passes into the hands of human smugglers capable of using high technology.
[i] European Union, “What is the Entry/Exit System (EES)?”, https://travel-europe.europa.eu/ees/what-is-the-ees, (Accessed: 15.08.2026).
[ii] European Union, “ETIAS”, https://travel-europe.europa.eu/etias, (Accessed: 15.08.2026).
[iii] Guvanch Durdyyev, “The Invisible Border: Algorithmic Power and the Future of European Migration Governance”, Seoul Institute of Global Affairs (SIGA), https://seoulinstitute.com/the-invisible-border-algorithmic-power-and-the-future-of-european-migration-governance/, (Accessed: 15.08.2026).
[iv] Border Violence Monitoring Network, “New Pact: EU Could Detain and Deport Children as Young as Six”, https://borderviolence.eu/app/uploads/NEW-PACT-EU-COULD-DETAIN-AND-DEPORT-CHILDREN-AS-YOUNG-AS-SIX-2.pdf, (Accessed: 15.08.2026).
[v] Victor Chidubem Iwuoha, “European Migration Control and the Migrant Smuggling Enterprise in West Africa: Using the Concept of Biometricycle to Explain the ‘Corporate Smuggling’ Dimensions”, Society, 63, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-026-01169-1, (Accessed: 15.08.2026).
