That's worse than my story, sorry they had to go through that.
I married my wife while I was living in her country, Georgia. Then I came back to the U.S. and started the process for her to come. It took 17 months. I didn't need a lawyer for it. We did later try to get a visitor visa for my mother-in-law and it got denied. I always say that if I had it to do over again, it would have probably been cheaper and quicker to fly them both to Mexico and then cross the border.
there's been a lot of work the past couple years for gnome mobile. It looked nice on my pinetab and pinephone about a year ago. Would be great on a more powerful tablet