WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is poised to send at least 2,000 more active-duty troops to the southwestern border, Defense Department officials said Tuesday, deployments that have already cost the military hundreds of millions of dollars and thrust the department into the center of the debate over border security and President Trump’s proposed wall.

The acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, told reporters that the United States would be sending “several thousand” additional troops to provide more support for the Department of Homeland Security’s border patrol efforts. Defense Department officials later said that they expect that number to be around 2,000.

That would come on top of the 2,400 troops who are there now, bringing the deployed number at the border close to the high of 5,900 that it reached in the weeks surrounding the midterm elections in November.

The deployment of several thousand military troops to secure the southwestern border will total more than $600 million by the end of the fiscal year in September, Pentagon officials also told the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

The deployment of active-duty troops through the end of January is estimated to cost $132 million, said Vice Adm. Michael Gilday, the director of operations for the joint staff. The cost of the National Guard’s operations at the border through the fiscal year, he estimated, will cost $550 million.

Since Mr. Trump declared what he called a national security crisis at the border that warranted the deployment of active-duty troops, the Defense Department has sought to limit their role. But the administration has kept them in the mix. The additional troops will be used to install concertina wire and provide more surveillance of the border area, Mr. Shanahan said.

Mr. Shanahan replaced Jim Mattis, who resigned in December as defense secretary, in a rebuke of much of Mr. Trump’s national security policy.

At one point last year, Mr. Trump described a “wall of people” to stop caravans of Central American refugees and called for up to 15,000 troops to defend the border. The Pentagon reluctantly sent 5,900, then cut that number quickly back to 2,400. The president also spoke of telling the military to respond to migrants throwing rocks as if they were rifles.

But the deployments can go only so far. The Posse Comitatus Act, dating to Reconstruction, bars American forces from engaging in law enforcement activities within the borders of the United States.

Democrats say the deployments — especially the ones just before the midterms — were flagrantly political.

“I am extremely concerned that we preserve the reality and perception that the U.S. military is apolitical,” said Representative Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan. “It is hard to feel it wasn’t political given how close it was to the midterms.”

Appearing before the House committee for the first time since Democrats took control this month, Admiral Gilday and John Rood, the under secretary of defense for policy, defended the deployments and said the military’s presence have yielded “very successful” results.

“We believe that our military’s presence and support has served to increase the effectiveness” of operations at the border, Admiral Gilday said, adding that the Defense Department has a “long history” of supporting efforts to secure American borders.

“We’re not trying just to have a photo op down there,” he continued.

As negotiators from the House and the Senate begin meeting this week to hash out a plan to secure the southwestern border and fund the government, Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee seized on the Pentagon’s cost estimates to press for more border security funding.

“We’re here at this moment in time because we failed to provide adequate resources” to the Department of Homeland Security, said Representative Paul Mitchell, Republican of Michigan.

Democrats on the committee remained skeptical.

It is “unclear why this is an appropriate use of the military’s time and resources,” said Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the chairman of the committee. “It appears service members are laying concertina wire and performing other tasks that are better suited for civilian law enforcement agencies.”

Admiral Gilday said active-duty troops were deployed before the midterms because thousands of migrants were “massing” along the border. The Trump administration chose to send troops because they could be deployed more quickly than the National Guard, he said. The Department of Homeland Security is currently tracking three migrant caravans containing 12,000 people moving toward the border, Mr. Rood said.

Democrats pressed Defense Department officials to identify which projects would be affected if Mr. Trump declares a national emergency and moves funds to build a border wall. Mr. Rood declined to answer, and added that the department had “only done the preliminary preplanning” for such an event.

“We are supporting our federal partners on the border, and that mission has been extended until September,” said Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. “We are currently sourcing the units involved and there will be an increase of a few thousand troops.”

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