While Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kritsi Noem is busy cosplaying as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent — and pointing a rifle at an actual agent’s head while she does it — Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons is plotting how to turn the U.S. immigration enforcement system into an Amazon-style business for deportations. 

According to a Wednesday report from AZ Mirror, during a speech at this year’s Border Security Expo in Phoenix, Lyons told the audience that “we need to get better at treating this like a business.”

“Like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings,” Lyons added. He expanded on his vision: “We need to buy more beds, we need more airplane flights and I know a lot of you are here for that reason.”

It should come as no surprise that President Donald Trump and his top immigration officials want to both increase and expedite the number of deportations. In the first months of his presidency, Trump has tested a variety of ways to skirt established immigration law and removal proceedings, including through the attempted use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), an 18th century law that allows the president to detain and remove non-citizens during times of war, “invasion or predatory incursion.” 

For weeks now, the Trump administration has been locked in a fierce court battle over the removal of over 200 Venezuelan and Salvadoran immigrants to prisons accused of human rights abuses in El Salvador. The government has argued that not only are the deportations legal under the Alien Enemies Act, but that they have no power to return those removed without due process because they are now in the custody of a third party: El Salvador. The administration has openly admitted that at least one of the men disappeared into a foreign prison system — Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia — was sent there as a result of an “administrative error,” and reporting by multiple outlets have found that the vast majority of those sent to El Salvador lacked any criminal record.