As President Donald Trump’s plans on immigration continue to take shape, his administration is sending 1,500 additional troops to the southern border. The service members include 1,000 soldiers as well as 500 Marines who were previously stationed in the San Diego area, on standby to assist in fighting the wildfires across Southern California. Those troops were expected to be in place at the border Thursday or Friday, the Department of Defense said, working on placing additional physical barriers at the border, among other ways of assisting the Department of Homeland Security. Relevant content: Immigration Jan 22 Breaking down some of Trump's executive orders and policy changes on immigration Immigration Jan 20 Thousands of migrants lose CBP One border appointments after Trump takes office The military will also operate deportation flights for more than 5,000 people already detained by Customs and Border Protection in the San Diego and El Paso, Texas, sectors. Plans to deploy the troops and additional resources – including two C-130 and two C-17 aircrafts as well as helicopters – came after Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, enabling his administration to use the military in addressing what he has repeatedly called an “invasion.”   “To protect the security and safety of United States citizens, to protect each of the States against invasion, and to uphold my duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, it is my responsibility as President to ensure that the illegal entry of aliens into the United States via the southern border be immediately and entirely stopped,” Trump’s order reads, in part. That order and military action come at a time when border crossings have dropped significantly. CBP reported 96,048 encounters at the border in December 2024, compared to 301,981 in December 2023. “The border is painted as violent, as an invasion, as a dangerous place,” said Adriana Jasso of the American Friends Service Committee, which assists migrants seeking asylum at the border in San Ysidro. “We see what we see. And the people that we have come into contact on the other side are families who are not running away from the authorities, who are not avoiding the authorities, who are not hiding from the authorities,” she said. “These are families that want to present themselves to Border Patrol and present their asylum case.” “The concept of an invasion is inconsistent with what we see,” Jasso added. She said she was unsure what the military’s role would look like at the border and hoped they would not have contact with migrants because they were not trained on the specific landscape or the challenges they face. The military presence will increase at a time when the Trump administration has also moved swiftly to expand the expedited removal process to more quickly deport people and removed the CBP One app that facilitated the legal entry of migrants, allowing them to schedule appointments at ports of entry. “The CBP One app is one of the tools that CBP has used to make the asylum process, a process, by the way, that is still legal under both international and domestic law, to make it more orderly,” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-51) said. “And he’s taken that tool away.” Jacobs said she believed it sets a “really dangerous precedent” to send the military to the border, and that it diverts resources from more pressing national security challenges around the world. “What Trump is doing is taking a military-first approach to a problem that is, at the end of the day, not a military problem,” Jacobs said. “We need to be addressing the root causes of why people are coming and needing to seek asylum in the U.S., like addressing governance and corruption and rule of law and violence.” “And when we look at how we’ve used our military-first approach in other places like Iraq and Afghanistan, it hasn’t worked very well. And the last thing we want is an Afghanistan on our southern border,” Jacobs continued. “The real emergency facing Californians right now is not the border; it’s wildfires,” Rep Juan Vargas (D-52) said in a statement. “It’s outrageous that President Trump would pull 500 Marines who were on standby to help combat wildfires to the border for a political stunt. This decision to send active-duty troops to the border leads us down a very dark path.” “We need real solutions to fix our broken immigration system, not executive orders aimed at creating chaos and fear,” Vargas’ statement continued. “We need pathways to citizenship, increased investments in asylum processing so cases can be more fairly and quickly adjudicated, and relief for families who have been separated.” Jasso noted that emotions were running high for her and the migrants who had arrived since Trump’s inauguration Monday. “There is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety, and I would say a level of fear,” she said. “We had a family from Guatemala who wanted to know and asked and asked many times, ‘Are we too late? Is this too late?’” Jasso continued. “I was not able to provide a sense or an honest answer. I said, ‘They will let you know. You will find out.’”