How do I replace @babel/polyfill for the latest Babel + Gulp?

Question

Babel has droppped @babel/polyfill in one of its latest releases: https://babeljs.io/docs/en/babel-polyfill. I am using gulp-babel and trying to make it support IE 9 and up:

gulp.task('js', () => {
  return gulp
    .src(paths.src.js.files)
    .pipe(babel({
      presets: ['@babel/preset-env']
    }))
    .pipe(gulp.dest(paths.dist.js.dir))
});

I've also created .browserslistrc with the following content:

# Browsers that we support

defaults

However no matter what I do it still ignores IE 9 and up. What am I missing?