Border Patrol has begun immediately returning Mexican citizens who illegally cross the southern border in an effort to avoid filling its 73 holding stations with people during the coronavirus pandemic, according to three employees.

Agents this week are swiftly remanding Mexicans who are stopped after entering the country illegally between official crossing points. The move is an attempt by the Trump administration to keep thousands of Mexican citizens who are arrested each month from ending up in holding cells for days, where the virus could spread among detainees and agents.

“Because of the coronavirus, they're like, ‘Everyone has to go. We can't have large groups of people together — it’ll spread the virus. Everyone has to go back,’” said one agent in a phone call Thursday.

The process of being immediately sent back is voluntary. But one agent said people “will always choose” it because it does not come with a court date in the future and will not show up on their record.

Agents are assigned to transport vans that have built-in dividers between the cab and passenger area with separate air systems. A second agent said a group of 30 Mexicans apprehended close to the border were loaded into the back of one or more vans and transported to the closest port of entry instead of a Border Patrol holding station.

“They have the vans. The plan is to designate them like, ‘Agent so and so’s van is dirty or has it been sanitized?’ It's still dirty. Go and pick up this group,’” said the second agent. “They drop a smoke bomb" in the van, the agent said. "They put it in the van and it's clean. You go back out and pick up more. All the while, that transport guy is wearing the mask and the gloves.”

Agents said Border Patrol has instructed them to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for staying 6 feet away from people they arrest, an unheard of task for law enforcement but one that seems to be working.

“We caught a group last night, and I told [officers], ‘Hey, don’t touch them if you don’t have to,’” the second agent said. “They didn’t touch them the whole time — loaded them in [the van] and there they went. It’s so weird. Just a strange situation.”

The vans would normally head to the nearby station for booking, but under the voluntary returns process, they go to the closest port of entry. The adults are fingerprinted and have their information checked against the criminal database. Then, they are released at the port on the Mexico side. The process from start to finish can take under an hour, and it is being implemented in the nine regions from Texas to California that Border Patrol divides the southern border by.

This process of immediate returns was used under the George. W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, a third official said. Quick returns were used when certain regions of the border were seeing a high number of Mexican arrests, and Border Patrol needed a way to return them quickly without having to detain large numbers of people.

It comes with upsides and downsides for agents. One complication is that some of those returned could immediately attempt to cross the border again an hour later and get caught again, making more work for agents.

Normally, Mexican adults are held at least briefly in the country and sent back to Mexico through longer processes. Some are held for trial.

In the first five months of fiscal year 2020, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were the top four countries of origin for adults arrested at the southern border. Of the 96,046 from those countries, 70% were from Mexico.

CBP did not respond to a request for comment.