This is a question that the UDC constantly asks the National Council: how have the decisions to return foreign offenders been applied since their entry into force in 2016? For the first time, the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) is able to give precise figures for 2023, thanks to the collaboration of the cantons which carry out this type of measures.
Last year, 2,250 people were subject to an enforceable expulsion order. “At the end of the first half of 2024, around 73% of them had left Switzerland, voluntarily or under police escort,” writes the SEM. This concerns around 1650 people.
But this execution rate is expected to increase further with new expulsions. The SEM specifies that at the end of 2023, “the execution rate of evictions pronounced during the first quarter of the same year was 87.1%”.
Thanks to information from the cantons, the SEM was able to have an overview and compile a certain number of figures: “The controlled departures were made on a voluntary basis for around a third and under constraint for the other two thirds. A good third of those who left Switzerland were nationals of an EU or EFTA member state, mainly from Romania, France and Italy. As for third-country nationals, they most often came from Albania, Algeria and Morocco. More than 90% of departures concerned men, mostly aged 18 to 54.
Criminal expulsion measure pronounced by the Swiss courts, expulsions involve removal from Switzerland or the Schengen area and a ban on entering Switzerland or the Schengen area for a period of 5 to 15 years depending on the case. .
It should be noted that article 66a of the penal code on the compulsory expulsion of foreigners convicted of certain offenses provides for a strictness clause. A judge can exceptionally waive an expulsion, particularly for a foreigner who was born or raised in Switzerland.
