Federal Act
on Foreign Nationals and Integration
(Foreign Nationals and Integration Act, FNIA)¹

¹ The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity of the Con­fed­er­a­tion or the can­ton may de­tain per­sons who do not hold a short stay, res­id­ence or set­tle­ment per­mit:

a.

to no­ti­fy them of a de­cision in con­nec­tion with their res­id­ence status;

b.

to de­term­ine their iden­tity or na­tion­al­ity, as far as their per­son­al co­oper­a­tion is re­quired.

² The per­son may be de­tained only for the dur­a­tion of the re­quired co­oper­a­tion or ques­tion­ing and the re­quired trans­port if ne­ces­sary, and for a max­im­um of three days.

³ If a per­son is de­tained, they must:

a.

be in­formed of the reas­on for their de­ten­tion;

b.

be per­mit­ted to con­tact the per­sons guard­ing them if they re­quire help.

⁴ If de­ten­tion is ex­pec­ted last longer than 24 hours, the per­son con­cerned shall be giv­en the op­por­tun­ity be­fore­hand to at­tend to or have someone else at­tend to ur­gent per­son­al mat­ters.

⁵ On re­quest, the com­pet­ent ju­di­cial au­thor­ity must re­view the leg­al­ity of the de­ten­tion.

⁶ The dur­a­tion of de­ten­tion shall not be de­duc­ted from the dur­a­tion of any de­ten­tion pending de­port­a­tion, in pre­par­a­tion for de­par­ture, or co­er­cive de­ten­tion.