Crown: cantons must free prisoners

For Corona: cantons must free prisoners

The pandemic delays and prevents deportations. Therefore, the cantons must release the prisoners. Every second hides.

andreas maurer / switzerland on the weekend

A young Moroccan applies for asylum in Switzerland and tells his story during the interview. He smoked and smelled glue when he was a kid. In all, he only attended school for two and a half years. He stole to survive. Subsequently, drug trafficking was added. He is now 16 years old and has been addicted to drugs for three years.

The authorities do not know how old he is or what his real name is. In any case, the Federal Administrative Court does not believe that he is a minor. Sometimes he testifies that he has lost his identity documents, again he claims they are in Turkey, and then he claims that they are with an aunt in Morocco. But he doesn’t care either. He refuses to help clarify his identity. In this article we will call him Karim.

According to his lawyer, Karim was even under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs during questioning at the immigration office. She worries about him because she suspects a trauma from his childhood. When he’s later summoned for an in-depth asylum evaluation, he doesn’t even show up. Only his lawyer, who is funded by the Heks aid organization, is participating in the conversation. She gives the record: “He may now be asleep in someone else’s apartment or on the street.”

>> Coronavirus: All the news in the live ticker

What else he does is recorded. He earns his income as a thief, for which he is convicted of business theft and property damage. He also commits trafficking and drug offenses. He was sentenced to prison and expelled from the country.

Morocco no longer issues replacement papers

After Karim has served a six-month sentence, he is sent to the Bässlergut deportation prison in Basel. He does not cooperate with the authorities. He told the judge: “I don’t know anyone in Morocco and I don’t know how I could live there.”

Usually the story would end here. The police would take him to the airport and put him on a Royal Air Maroc plane. In July, the judge still assumes that this solution is realistic, as the airline will resume flights that were suspended due to the August pandemic.

Therefore, the judge extends the detention for deportation. It is important that this man remain in prison, he writes in the verdict, as there is “great public interest in enforcing the expulsion of the foreigner who has committed criminal activity in Switzerland.”

The U-turn will continue in October. The judge learned from the Migration Office that Moroccan authorities would no longer issue replacement travel documents in their country during the crown emergency. Without this, Karim cannot be deported. Documents could take up to a year to be available.

The judge thinks it is too long and decides to release Karim from prison immediately. This is only allowed if the deportation can be carried out within a “reasonable period”. The judge must examine each case individually and assess the prognosis. Then she makes the momentous decisions herself.

How many such cases are there? The Secretary of State for Migration does not have an overview and refers to the cantons that are responsible for deportation procedures. Therefore, this newspaper conducted a survey in twelve German-speaking cantons and asked how many deported prisoners should be released because of the pandemic. Ten numbers provided.

The result: 89 foreigners were allowed out of prison due to the pandemic because their deportation cannot be carried out in the foreseeable time frame. All were detained because, according to the authorities, they would otherwise go into hiding. Most of them have just broken the Aliens Act. But a small part of them also committed crimes. After being released from prison, they would have to leave the country independently and register at the border or report to the authorities regularly.

The number of people in hiding: is it a lot or a little?

The survey shows: every second released prisoner hides. That’s a lot when you consider that there are criminals like Karim among them. The quota of almost fifty percent is also small considering that these people must constantly wait to be arrested again and still be deported. The authorities assumed that everyone would go into hiding.

The differences between the cantons are great. In some like Basel-Stadt and Baselland, hardly anyone has gone into hiding. In others like Zug and Schwyz, on the other hand, the immersion rate is one hundred percent.

One of the reasons for this is the different composition of the released prisoners. In Zug and Schwyz there are illegally entered foreigners who are caught without papers on the train journey from Milan to Zurich. Border guards then hand over the arrested people to the police at the nearest train station. These foreigners never wanted to stay in Zug or Schwyz anyway, instead they wanted to travel as soon as possible.

Liberation occurs in the opposite direction. In Zug, the police took eleven deported prisoners, who had to be released due to the pandemic, to the train station, gave them train tickets to Italy and waited for the train to leave. It was not verified whether they really stayed until Italy or got off at the next train station. In any case, none of them handed over a registration card at the Swiss border as planned. Therefore, they are now considered to be submerged.

When officers feel bad about discharge

René Peter from the Zug Migration Office organizes these procedures and says: “Of course, I prefer to make sure that these people are delivered cleanly to another country.” In the current situation, however, no other legal procedure is possible. “I have a bad feeling about the people that I know were involved in the drug trade here, for example,” he says. It was different if he had to release deported prisoners who had told him they wanted to travel to a neighboring country as soon as possible.

Alberto Achermann is professor of immigration law at the University of Bern. He assumes that most of those in hiding will leave Switzerland voluntarily: “They continue to travel because they have a better starting position in a big European city to start a new life.” In Switzerland, the risk of being arrested again is higher. “Countries like France or Italy do not have the resources or the will to expel these people.”

Karim’s story will probably continue like this. In an interrogation he declared that he wanted to travel to France, illegally, of course. He has been traveling in Europe since 2015, when he left his homeland for Italy. But he left no traces in the European databases. It is not registered in any country. When the officials of the Secretary of State for Migration upload their fingerprints into the identification system, the message “NOHIT” appears. Switzerland · Page 6, Article 2/3