The Trump administration may soon give U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a new tool to ramp up mass deportations: its own dedicated fleet of planes.

According to NBC News, "Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is pushing for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use an influx of funds to buy, own and operate its own fleet of airplanes to deport immigrants, two sources familiar with the discussions told NBC News. Former officials said that ICE owning and maintaining its own planes would be costly but could make it easier for the agency to potentially double the number of people it deports each month."

Historically, ICE has chartered aircraft to use in deportation flights, with around 8 to 14 on hire at a typical time, enough to manage 15,000 removals per month. Per former Biden administration ICE chief of staff Jason Houser, “If the goal is to get to 30 to 35,000 removals a month, you would need to double the number of planes,” for a fleet of around 30.

"With a guaranteed set of 30 or more planes, ICE wouldn’t be constrained by the limits of the companies it contracts with, which charter their planes to multiple clients," noted the report. "The Trump administration has vowed to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants per year. ICE deported 100,000 to 150,000 in his first six months in office, according to internal data that includes voluntary self-departures in which immigrants left the U.S. on their own."

The administration has also aggressively pushed incentives for this "self-deportation," including cash bonuses for doing so and the promise of being able to apply for residency later — although some immigration experts have warned this is a trap.

Until now, ICE has not had enough funding to set up its own deportation airline, but that has changed with the passage of Trump's tax cut megabill, which in addition to slashing taxes for the wealthy and cutting over $1 trillion from Medicaid and food assistance, set aside tens of billions in increases for the ICE budget, to the point that it's unclear they can even spend all the money.