What will happen if a German citizen, Swiss resident, cannot present ID when entering Switzerland from Italy?

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So, this is what the concerned person told me:

Unfortunately his train was stopped at Brig, whereby he was kicked off. The Swiss spent about 2.5 hours interrogating and fingerprinting him.

In the end, he was issued an emergency identity certificate confirming his status, as well as an onward ticket to Paris via Lausanne.

On the way back from Paris to Zurich, he was again checked between Mulhouse and Basel, and went through fine with the identity certificate.

UPDATE: I tried going the same route myself without showing ID yesterday as an experiment (I'm Swedish with Swiss residency, but do not look Nordic). At Brig, an Italophone Swiss officer (who thankfully knew German as well) hauled me off and led me into the building where I was made to fill out and sign a form containing my name, date of birth, nationality, address, occupation and contact details. Another officer then tapped stuff into their computer and wished me a pleasant onward journey. All of this taking 5 minutes at the most.

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