The Biden administration is planning to send 1,500 more active-duty troops temporarily to the southern border to assist agents ahead of an expected influx of migrants seeking asylum, three U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The move comes as Title 42, the public-health law that permits the U.S. to deny asylum and migrations claims for public health reasons, is set to expire on May 11. Some senior U.S. officials say the end of Title 42 could entice more people seeking a better life in America to present themselves at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The service members, mainly coming from Army units, will not have a law enforcement role. They will be armed for self-defense but will be performing monitoring and administrative tasks only, freeing up Border Patrol officials to process migrant claims, the three officials said.

The additional troops, which are being sent to fill a request from the Department of Homeland Security, will fill “critical capability gaps,” including detection and monitoring, data entry and warehouse support, according to one of the officials. They will be there for up to 90 days, after which military reservists or contractors will do the work, two of the officials said.

If Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approves the official request from the Department of Homeland Security Tuesday, as expected, the soldiers would join 2,500 National Guard troops already activated to assist law enforcement at the border, according to a Defense Department official who, like the three officials quoted for this story, was granted anonymity to speak ahead of an announcement.

The National Guard troops already at the border are deployed in active-duty status, which means their mission is funded by the federal government and not their respective states, according to the DoD official. They are assisting border agents with detection and monitoring.

President Joe Biden last week signed an executive order authorizing the administration to call up active-duty forces to address drug trafficking at the southern border, essentially preapproving the mission, the DoD official said. DHS then asked the Pentagon for assistance, which Austin will sign Tuesday.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville declined to discuss the order when asked by POLITICO before his Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on the Army’s 2024 budget proposal on Tuesday. “We’re not going to comment on that right now,” he said.

Fox News first reported the development.

Last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas previewed how his agency would be stretched by the end of Title 42.

“We have been preparing for this transition for more than a year and a half. Notwithstanding those preparations, we do expect that encounters at our southern border will [be] increasing, as smugglers are seeking to take advantage of this change and already are hard at work spreading disinformation that the border will be open after that,” he told reporters. “High encounters will place a strain on our entire system, including our dedicated and heroic workforce and our communities.”

While the politics of the border crisis have shifted in recent years, Biden could be in an awkward spot with members of his own party if he moves ahead. Many Democrats fiercely resisted the Trump administration’s deployment of active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, arguing the move was politically motivated, would harm readiness and service members would be quietly be involved in law enforcement. The House Armed Services Committee’s first hearing after Democrats took control in 2019, for instance, was on the Pentagon’s support for DHS at the border.

But the Senate’s top appropriator on defense, Jon Tester (D-Mont.), said he wouldn’t object to the move as an emergency measure. He added that the news highlights the need to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security.

“We need a secure border, if that’s what we need to do now, do it,” Tester said. “The real issue here is that we have to empower the Department of Homeland Security, and Customs and Border Protection to do that job.”

The Biden administration’s move continues the trend of presidents using troops to fill in for the personnel-strapped Border Patrol as Congress hasn’t fully funded the agency to do its work.

In 2006, then-President George W. Bush deployed 6,000 troops to the border in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas for Operation Jump Start, which lasted two years. While there, the troops assisted with more than 185,000 apprehensions of undocumented immigrants.

Four years later, then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Biden sent up to 1,200 troops to the border during Operation Phalanx, which stretched for about a year. Soon after, the Obama administration also deployed troops, including a Stryker unit, from Fort Bliss to the border communities in Arizona and New Mexico for two months.

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump sent some 2,100 National Guardsmen to the southwest, though they mostly stayed miles from the border and largely performed support tasks for the U.S. Border Patrol. Months later, days before midterm elections, he deployed another 5,200 troops to fortify the border, drawing backlash from former military officials and Democrats who accused Trump of abusing the military to rile up his base.

Matt Berg and Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.