Homeland Security is on a crash course to recruit and train people ahead of the Aug. 19 launch date for President Biden’s latest deportation amnesty for illegal immigrant spouses married to U.S. citizens.

Two weeks before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is supposed to start accepting applications, the agency hasn’t revealed key details, such as how much it will cost to apply and what sort of criminal entanglements will be forgiven for those looking to sign up for the new “parole” program.

And The Washington Times has learned some of the 267 staff positions dedicated to processing the applications won’t even begin training until Aug. 19, and still others won’t be reassigned to their new jobs until a week later.

Mr. Biden announced the program more than six weeks ago, and those on all sides of the immigration debate are surprised that there are still so many holes this close to the start date.

“We don’t have clear details yet,” said one activist in Florida whose group plans to run clinics to help people sign up.

One detail is clear: USCIS is creating a “100% virtual” office to handle the new applications.

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According to an internal email late last month, the agency is rushing to recruit immigration officers, assistants and supervisors to work the new virtual office, which will be known as Waivers and Temporary Status or WATS.

The email from Connie Nolan, associate director of USCIS’s Service Center Operations, confirmed that training for the background check unit won’t begin until Aug. 19 — the same date the program is supposed to start taking applications. Some positions won’t even be reassigned until a week later, according to the email.

USCIS didn’t respond to repeated inquiries for this story but Ms. Nolan, in her email, acknowledged chaotic times at the agency.

“We know there has been a lot of changes in the past couple of years and probably more to come. Change brings opportunities and with it personal growth,” she wrote.

Experts on the immigration security side of the debate said the virtual office is worrying because it increases chances for fraud in a program already ripe for bogus applications.

“In a ‘100% virtual’ program, fraud will be rampant, especially marriage fraud,” said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at the Immigration Accountability Project. “It’s easy to produce fake marriage certificates and other documentary ‘proof’ of long-term residence. It’s a whole lot harder to fake a long-term marriage in person.”

As Mr. Biden described the program in June, it would apply to illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for at least 10 years and were married to a U.S. citizen by the time of the program’s announcement. Illegal immigrant children of the spouses would also be covered.

They would be granted what’s known as “parole in place,” which offers both a preemptive defense against deportation and a work permit, which brings many of the benefits of tentative lawful status. The spouses would also be allowed to apply for full legal status from within the U.S., abrogating the usual requirement that they return home to collect a visa.

Critics say they expect a cottage industry of fraud as people seek to create and backdate bogus marriages.

The White House called the spouses program a way to keep families together and prevent illegal immigrants from having to be separated while they comply with the law and return home for a visa.

The government estimated that about half a million spouses and 50,000 of their children would be protected.

The new program isn’t as ambitious as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which then-President Obama created in 2012, another election year. That program, which began taking applications on Aug. 15 of that year, gave young adult illegal immigrant “Dreamers” a stay of deportation and an offer of work permits.

Those Dreamers, like the spouses in the new parole program, were never in much real danger of being deported. The main benefit of DACA — and the spouse program — is the chance to put down firmer roots in communities.

Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge, said the Biden administration’s timing on the spouses program is tied to politics, and was “half-baked at the time the president announced it.”

He said it came two weeks after Mr. Biden announced a tougher border policy, and the spouse program was intended to mollify immigrant rights groups upset over the earlier announcement.

“This was the spoonful of sugar that made the asylum medicine go down,” he told The Times.

He said rushing the announcement also means Homeland Security can start accepting applications, which will make it tougher for a potential Trump administration to unwind the program in the future, both legally and politically.

“The question becomes whether Trump is going to want to make spouses of U.S. citizens the hill he wants to die on,” said Mr. Arthur, now at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Mr. Biden announced the spouses program on June 18. Three days later, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in State Department v. Munoz in which the justices ruled that U.S. spouses don’t have a “fundamental liberty interest” in having their partners admitted to the U.S.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the decision but, in her ruling, stated that marriage “is not an automatic ticket to a green card.”

“A married citizen-noncitizen couple must jump through a series of administrative hoops to apply for the lawful permanent residency that marriage can confer,” she wrote. She said that includes “the risk” that when the noncitizen spouse departs, they may not be able to reenter the U.S.

“Ironically, the longer the noncitizen spouse has lived in the United States, the more difficult and uncertain the process to adjust to lawful status can become,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.

Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law, said in his review of the case that he expects Justice Sotomayor’s opinion to be used in legal challenges to Mr. Biden’s program.

Alongside the spouses program, Mr. Biden in June also unveiled a separate program for illegal immigrants who earned degrees from U.S. colleges and who had job offers.

They are supposed to apply for a work visa from abroad, but leaving the U.S. risks not being allowed back in because they didn’t have legal permission to be here. The new program allows them to obtain a quick waiver letting them back in.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.