This paper explores the practice of pushback operations in the Mediterranean Sea in the last decade, observing it both through the prism of states’ security interests and through their obligations under human rights law. Analysis of the content of some of the basic human rights – in particular the right to life, the prohibition of refoulement and the prohibition of collective expulsions – and their applicability in the context of pushback operations reveals that it is virtually impossible to reconcile pushbacks as a means of safeguarding states’ borders and states’ human rights obligations. It seems that the Mediterranean states and the European Union have come full circle – from the Italian pushback programme in 2009, through the condemnation of the practice by the European Court of Human Rights in the landmark decision of Hirsi Jamaa v. Italy and the subsequent replacement of the practice of pushbacks with the practice of pullbacks, to renewed systemic hot returns. A viable solution at the European Union level needs to be found or otherwise the states which are on the front line of migratory flows will continue to prioritise their own security interests over their human rights obligations.