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The extra time to establish family roots by getting married or waiting for case law to be decided in federal court could offer more options for avoiding removal, according to legal experts.

“When it comes to victims of domestic violence and gang-based crime the law has been thrown into turmoil … having a delay of game for those individuals, that’s not bad news,” McKinnley told ABC News.

And for some immigrants with weak legal cases, the delay buys time in the US before they are deported.

One possible solution to helping relieve the backlog is a fundamental restructuring of how such courts are funded and resourced, Khan said. This method would include removing courts from the executive branch where they are currently under the purview of the Department of Justice and creating a system where the courts function and are funded more independently.

\"Immigration courts have been starved of resources for so long because we are so low on the totem pole with regard to appropriate funding,\" she said.

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