FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany—Before 25-year-old Abhishek Budhiraja leaves his dorm to go to campus, he pats down his pockets. “Phone, keys, wallet, headphones,” he says, running through his checklist. Recently, that list has grown longer: “Student ID, passport, residence permit.”

Today, like most other days, Budhiraja anticipates needing to prove his identity.

FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany—Before 25-year-old Abhishek Budhiraja leaves his dorm to go to campus, he pats down his pockets. “Phone, keys, wallet, headphones,” he says, running through his checklist. Recently, that list has grown longer: “Student ID, passport, residence permit.”

Today, like most other days, Budhiraja anticipates needing to prove his identity.

On the far side of a blue city bridge that connects Germany’s eastern border city of Frankfurt an der Oder to its twin city, Slubice, Poland, a group of border agents and police officers block the sidewalk. They wear bulletproof vests affixed with walkie-talkies, and hawkishly scan cars and pedestrians as they pass. A stream of morning commuters on foot walk by them without slowing their gait.

Budhiraja, who came to Germany in January 2024 on a student visa from India, is not among them. As he approaches Slubice, steps away from his university campus, five agents knowingly look at one another. A guard in military gear steps forward, voicing a rote command Budhiraja has long memorized.

Abhishek Budhiraja, an international student from India, rides the bus on his daily commute from his dorm in Frankfurt to his university’s branch campus in Slubice, Poland, on Oct. 7.

“It’s always like this. I’m getting stopped every day,” Budhiraja said afterward. Often, he’s stopped again on his reentry to Germany. “They just ask for my documents, and then they let me” pass.

Although Budhiraja’s university, Europa-Universität Viadrina, has buildings on both sides of the German-Polish border, it is a single entity—almost like the cities themselves. But that interdependence has become strained as growing anti-migration sentiment leads to tightened internal borders across the continent.

The Stadtbrücke bridge connecting the so-called twin cities was once the symbol of unity and free movement between Germany and Poland. Now, its symbolism is changing, as countries are reimposing internal borders at the risk of European unity. Over the summer, the bridge’s royal blue EU flags have been replaced by red and white Polish ones.

An old movie theater sign in Slubice, formerly eastern Germany, reads “No Past'” from its once “Kino Piast” on Oct. 7. It was named after the first Polish royal dynasty, the Piasts, during a comprehensive Polonization campaign carried out post-1945 after Poland acquired new territories from Germany.

The Schengen Agreement has long been seen as a defining........

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