When I saw the header of the thread it reminded me of my first encounter with the Israeli system as an adult.
I never learned in Israel and my background is from Satmar.
I went to Israel once as a child as 11 years old for a Rosh Hashanah, but that was it.
When I traveled for the first time with my wife to Israel, it was for a short trip, we left JFK Thursday afternoon, and were scheduled to be back Monday morning, Lag Baomer was that year on a Sunday.
When we arrived at the customs in Israel - BTW it was still the old airport, and we had to travel with a bus to the terminal - we realized that we don't have our passports with us. We knew and they knew that we had a passport in NY when we departed JFK, otherwise I wouldnt be able to get on the plane.
It was a few years after 9/11, we were a young couple a few years after the Chasunah without kids. You can imagine the stress I had as I was the one who held the passports and I even filled out the forms on the plane.
It was Friday afternoon, about 1pm, we were scheduled to be for Shabbos in Jerusalem, by a family member. We took the latest Elal flight out of NY, because my wife should miss the least work.
I had a Drivers license from NY, but my wife didn't have any other ID on her. They sent people to the plane to look for the passport, but came back empty handed. I begged them to let me go check, but they refused.
We were sure we will spend Shabbos in the best case scenario in the Airport, and sent back Moitzai Shabbos to the US. We just hoped not to be sent to a jail/detention center for over Shabbos. BTW at the old terminal spending a whole shabbos was not a luxury at all, it was not like today that the airport is a city for itself.
To make a long story short, they interrogated both of us for a few minutes in seperate rooms, and they saw we were full fledged chareidim and US citizens. They even joked with us about making Aliyah.
Knowing we made arrangements to be shabbos in Jerusalem, they tried rushing the paperwork, and they let us in the country, with just a copy of an ID which a family member faxed over from the US.
Sunday morning we got a call from Elal lost and found that they found the passports.
I must say it gave us a whole new perspective on the Israeli government. I am sure if this would happen in the US, with a foreign citizen, they wouldn't let them in with temporary paperwork.