After a federal appeals court early Sunday denied an initial request by the Trump administration to reinstate its controversial travel ban, a crush of people stranded in legal limbo rushed to fly back to the U.S. during the temporary stay.

Sunday’s ruling by the 9th Circuit capped several days of chaos as airlines and immigration authorities adjusted to a constantly changing landscape of court rulings and federal guidance on the executive order that barred refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

A judge in a lower federal court had put a temporary stop to the travel ban. Because the appeals court declined to intervene immediately, affected travelers can enter until at least Monday. The appeals court set a schedule asking challengers to the ban to file a response by roughly 3 a.m. ET on Monday, and the Justice Department to reply to that by 6 p.m.

At Dulles International Airport on Sunday, an elated Roslyn Sinha arrived on a flight from Dubai, anxious to join her husband, Neil, in Texas.

She landed at Dulles around 8 a.m., emerging from the terminal almost two hours later without problem.

“Neil? Neil? Neil? They are not sending me to Dubai, Neil,” Sinha said, beaming as she spoke on the phone with her husband.

Sinha had been in Dubai visiting her ailing mother. She was lying in bed her first night in Dubai, when she received a text from her husband just hours after Trump signed the travel ban. The 30-year-old former TV personality was born and raised in the United Arab Emirates, but the country’s rules require she maintain an passport from Iraq, her parent’s native country. Iraq is one of the seven countries on the ban list.

With her green card application still pending and confusion mounting over who would be barred from the country, the newlywed scrambled to find a way back to her husband in the United States.

“I thought it was going to be over, I’m going to lose him,” Sinha recalled Sunday.

So she cut short her visit with her mother, who is partially paralyzed after suffering a series of strokes on Dec. 28.

“I cried when I left because I didn’t see her, I didn’t get to see her at all. I was awake at night calling lawyers, calling (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), calling airports trying to figure out how to get back to my husband,” Sinha said. “During the day, I was so exhausted.”

After a few canceled flights, arguments at airports and even concocting a backup plan to get a visa to travel to Mexico and drive to Texas, Sinha managed to get on a flight to Washington, where her attorney could intervene if she ran into issues.

Immigration attorneys, dozens of whom have been camped out at Dulles and airports around the country since the ban was implemented, expected another round of passengers to arrive Sunday afternoon. Many could be heard on phones, arguing with airline representatives to let their passengers board as some seemed confused over the various court rulings and what they meant.

Sinha counts herself as one of the lucky ones. She and her husband knew that a crackdown on immigration from Middle Eastern countries was likely when Trump took office. But they figured it would only apply to newcomers – not people already living in the United States.

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