This article outlines public Social Services’ encounters with irregular migrants in Sweden from the perspectives of institutional and front-line staff (or streetlevel bureaucrats). Staff and executive considerations are influenced by a de jure exclusion of irregular migrants, a part of the control of migration. Staff faces contradictory demands concerning international and national regulations, which leads to legal ambiguities open to discretionary powers and sometimes even arbitrariness. The aim is to explore the handling of such cases, experiences and considerations focusing cited values when enacting discretion and to discuss implications of the unclear legal situation. The material derives from two web-based questionnaires (national and local) and interviews with front-line staff handling cases concerning irregular migrants. A tentative analysis confirms that the public Social Services encounter irregular migrants and that handling differs greatly. It proposes that different approaches, a lack of guidelines and the contradictory legal framework endanger the rule of law. Differing and ambivalent fundamental values appear to be involved when enacting discretion: some related to social work and others to controlled migration. The controlled migration values cited by some respondents consisted of more and better border- control and better cooperation with the Immigration Services. The invoked social work values imply a conception of a right to social services and the control of migration as independent processes and jurisdiction related to human rights, essentially the crc, applicable beyond the nationally framed legal status and not subordinated to policies of migration.