Migration has set off political upheaval across the continent, but it has especially dominated Italy’s attention. It has left the government scrambling for solutions, from furnishing Libya with patrol boats, to floating the possibilities of closing Italian ports to ships that do not fly Italian flags, to granting travel visas to migrants so they can go north.

As Italian politicians have physically scuffled over whether to extend citizenship to the children of immigrants born in Italy, the left-leaning government, keenly aware that the issue is fueling the conservative opposition, has grown exasperated by the reluctance across Europe to open up borders and ports and share the burden of a mass migration.

Much of the focus has recently fallen on the ships run by nongovernmental organizations, or N.G.O.s, which according to Italy’s interior minister, Marco Minniti, operate 34 percent of rescue missions in a sea where about 2,000 refugees have drowned this year.

More than 93,000 migrants, the majority sub-Saharan Africans, have been rescued and taken to Italian ports so far this year. There is a concern the arrivals could top 200,000 by year’s end.

Right-wing groups have particularly latched onto an Italian prosecutor in Sicily who, without providing any evidence, began investigating potential collusion between aid groups and human traffickers. This month, human rights groups lashed out after an aid group leaked a draft of a government proposal that would bar N.G.O. ships from entering Libyan territorial waters for rescues, and slow them down by banning them from transferring refugees to bigger vessels.

Mr. Fiato, like some of Italy’s leading right-wing politicians, argues that the aid ships become a magnet for more immigration, and that they end up benefiting smugglers and mobsters who exploit reception centers, all the while costing more lives by drawing more migrants into the water. The United Nations immigration agency called this argument baseless.