No, if your visa expires you need to maintain your legal status while a PERM application is pending: https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/maintain... (“This is especially important if and when you are waiting to apply for lawful permanent residence, commonly called a ‘green card.’ If you are in the United States without any immigration status, you are considered to be here illegally, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) may deny your green card application for that reason alone.”).

What’s happening here is that these people were here on tourist visas or completely illegally. Then at some point they married a U.S. citizen and filed a PERM application. But that filing doesn’t protect them from deportation for their original illegal status.