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he aim of this paper is to question, from the perspective of a principled theoryof criminalization, the legitimacy of making irregular immigration (IM) a crime. In orderto do this, I identify three main ways in which the political decision to introduce a crime ofIM may be defended: according to the first, IM is amalum in sethe wrongness of whichresides in its being a violation of states’ territorial sovereignty; according to the second, IMis a justifiedmalum prohibitumthe wrongness of which resides in its being a violation of ajustified immigration regulation; according to the third, IM is amalum in sethe wrongnessof which resides in its harmful consequences for receiving states’ citizens. My thesis is thatnone of these arguments succeeds in providing us with sufficiently good reasons to justifythe use of criminal punishment to enforce the closure of state borders. As regards the first, Iargue that it relies on a misleading conception of what is entailed by states’ territorialsovereignty, and that therefore it is unsound as an argument for the state’s right to controlimmigration (even though, were it sound, it would show IM to be a publicmalum in se, andthus a potential candidate for criminalization). With regard to the second, I argue that, bethey legitimate or not, immigration regulations enacted by states cannot provide thosewould-be immigrants they aim to exclude with content-independent reasons to complywith them; and this is a necessary pre-condition to conclude that IM is a justifiedmalumprohibitum. As regards harm-based approaches, I argue that the notions they rely on (suchas collective/cultural harmfulness and precautionary responsibility) are completely unfit ascriteria for criminalization. This leads me to the conclusion that, unless other more con-vincing arguments are provided for, IM should not be criminaliz