Marrakech – Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) has announced a series of deportation flights to Morocco in the coming weeks, closing months of tension between Bern and Rabat over the return of undocumented nationals.
According to recent reporting by the Swiss outlet Blick, 353 Moroccans are currently required to leave Switzerland. More than a fifth of them, 83 people, live in the canton of Bern, where 41 have been identified.
The announcement came as the crisis at Ceuta drew renewed attention to migration pressure across Europe. Although the Spanish-occupied enclave lies outside the Schengen area, Zurich cantonal police ran random checks in early August on flights arriving from Spain and reported no anomalies.
The practical obstacles remain considerable. Of those identified in Bern, 23 have disappeared, while 14 are in pretrial detention or serving prison sentences, according to state councilor Philippe Müller of the PLR party.
Müller wants deportation detention extended to at least a year and a half, up from the current few months, which apply only when removal is foreseeable. He argued that a Moroccan who knows a criminal offense means immediate prison and expulsion would no longer view Switzerland as an attractive destination.
In March, Müller sent a critical letter to Federal Councilor Beat Jans, a copy of which Blick obtained. He accused the Moroccan administration of dragging its feet, noting that identification in criminal cases takes weeks while the embassy sometimes needs more than a year for expulsions.
He cited the case of a Moroccan stopped repeatedly by Bern police between the ages of 9 and 13, at times in life-threatening circumstances, and imprisoned on several occasions. The embassy, he wrote, did not respond to requests for consular contact, which he views as a breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Within the Swiss federal administration, this reluctance to take back minor offenders has been linked to Bern’s stance on Western Sahara, a position that had displeased Rabat.
That changed in April. During a visit to Bern, Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita met Jans, who prioritized migration cooperation, and his counterpart Ignazio Cassis. A joint communication described Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as the most serious, credible, and pragmatic basis for resolving the dispute, and welcomed UN Security Council Resolution 2797.
The pace of cooperation shifted soon after. Only one identity had been verified between February and March. In April the figure jumped to 185, before settling at 14 per month in May and June, still well above earlier levels.
On May 22, State Secretary for Migration Vincenzo Mascioli traveled to Rabat to sign a returns agreement with Khalid Zerouali, Morocco’s director of migration and border surveillance. Identification procedures will be cut from 150 to 30 days, travel documents issued faster, and Morocco had already transmitted more than 200 identifications before the deal was finalized.
The two governments also agreed to strengthen economic and police cooperation, including training and expertise exchanges. They coordinate regionally through the Rabat Process, which Switzerland chairs this year, and Morocco became a priority country for Swiss development cooperation in 2025.
The SEM reported that forced returns in the first half of 2026 nearly matched the total for all of 2025. The sharp rise in identifications, it added, will translate into more removals in the weeks ahead.
