Over the course of less than three years, the Syrian refugee influx into Lebanon transformed the country into the largest host of refugees per capita in the world. In response to this influx, a manifold set of authorities emerged as critical players in the governance of this migrant population. Alongside international agencies, government agencies, and municipalities, arguably no institution has been more significant in determining the lives of Syrians than General Directorate of General Security (al-Amn al-'Aam). A notably centralized and effective component of the state’s security apparatus, General Security is the security branch tasked with all matters related to resident aliens and tourists on Lebanese territory. For Syrians, these offices are the sites where they seek to regularize their status, claim residency, and at times even receive deportation orders. Actors involved in this dynamic extend beyond the agents of the state security apparatus itself, and include employers, sponsors (kafeels), and family members, whose roles as intermediaries are critical in refugees’ engagement with General Security. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in and around the regional offices of the Directorate General of General Security from 2015-2016 in the South, Mount Lebanon, North, and Beqaa, I analyze the ways in which these spaces are constituted as sites of enormous discretionary state power. I shed light on how ambiguity of policy, lack of information, and ultimate discretion serve to strengthen the authority of these offices, and the Lebanese state more broadly, on Syrian migrants and refugees, and, critically, on their mobility within the boundaries of the Lebanese territory and ultimately may serve to push them beyond its borders. This paper advances important debates in political science and geography on boundaries and border-making, the limits of state power and broader issues of migration and refugee governance.