In a press release Wednesday, Paul Nehlen, the Wisconsin businessman who challenged Speaker of the House Paul Ryan last year, chided Ryan for his rumored willingness to include a legislative amnesty for young illegals in an unrelated budget bill.

While President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive amnesty is drawing to a close after action by President Donald Trump, Washington is abuzz with speculation the Republican-controlled Congress will create a legislative replacement for the program. President Trump himself seemed open to the idea when he announced the end of DACA.

Troublingly for immigration hawks, however, it was reported Tuesday that Speaker Ryan is prepared to concede the legalization of more than 800,000 illegal aliens, without securing any concessions on border security or pro-American immigration reform, in order to pass a budget.

It was to this news Nehlen reacted.

“Paul Ryan is holding the federal budget hostage in order to foist his progressive open-border agenda on the American people,” Nehlen said in his press release. “Paul Ryan is taking a page out of the Barack Obama book by creating a budget crisis so he can force through his liberal open-borders agenda.”

Nehlen called the reports of an amnesty deal “Ryan’s cynical ploy to hold the budget at gunpoint in order to give illegal aliens a path to citizenship” and said such a move “should disqualify him from leadership in the House and from representing Wisconsin in Congress.”

The budget narrowly passed by the House Thursday did not include a DACA replacement. That budget was passed first in the Senate and is widely seen as a prelude to a much more comprehensive bill that will include a major tax cut. It remains to be seen if the DACA amnesty issue will be revisited at that time, perhaps as an olive branch to Democrats to secure tax reform.

Regardless, Nehlen already has announced he will be running against Ryan in next year’s Republican primary for Wisconsin’s First U.S. House District.