This article contributes to current debates on the ‘humanitarian border’, with particular attention to search and rescue (SAR) operations in the Central Mediterranean. Building on Critical Security and Border Studies, it argues that the concept of humanitarian border is more problematic than often assumed, especially in the case of SAR operations, which confront us with an either/or choice: lives are either saved or left at risk. Contemporary Italian border politics privileges a securitarian approach that seeks to obstruct the pro-active SAR activities undertaken by NGOs. Against this backdrop, the article suggests reading SAR operations through the work of Jacques Rancière. His distinction between policing – aiming at protecting existing (sovereign) order – and politics – aiming at disrupting and breaking that order – offers a valuable framework for conceptualizing the antagonistic relation between the government’s securitarian approach and NGOs’ ethical activities. By breaking away from the securitarian imperatives, NGOs contest the assumption that national security always already overrides any ethical concerns and obligations. In doing so, they disrupt the status quo and enact a dissensual politics.