“We all think about immigration . . . as the state asks us to think about it and, ultimately, as it thinks about it itself.” This aphorism of the sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad seems to speak to lawyers and, in particular, international lawyers who are accustomed to thinking of immigration as a mere question of sovereignty. I contend that this internalization of sovereignty by the legal profession is a pure mystification. I call for acknowledging the duality of sovereignty as a Janus with two faces. This metaphor illuminates the ontological ambivalence of the border that can be viewed as either a passage or a wall depending on the viewpoint.