Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has promised that the island of Lampedusa will soon be free of migrants.
Thousands of people have arrived on the island south of Sicily since January, travelling from Tunisia and Libya.
Officials say sanitary conditions have become "desperate" and islanders have staged protests at the town hall.
On a visit to the island, Mr Berlusconi announced to a crowd that in "48 to 60 hours Lampedusa will be inhabited only by Lampedusans".
About 20,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean since the upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East began in January.
Emergency
Some 6,000 migrants - more than the total population of the island - are now living there in makeshift camps.
There were no new arrivals on Tuesday night, Italian media reported, the first night with no new immigrants for some time.
On Wednesday morning, five ships arrived, sent by the Italian government to Lampedusa to take migrants to camps on the mainland. One of the ships was the naval vessel San Marco and the rest were civilian ferries, reports said. Another boat was expected later.
Mr Berlusconi's plane arrived on the island shortly after 1300 local time.