In the final days of the Trump administration, the machinery of immigration cruelty kept grinding right along, because even if a new administration was on the way, there was still time to separate some families. Like for instance two Haitian brothers, Christian Laporte, 19, and Vladimir Fardin, 9, who arrived at San Francisco International Airport on Sunday. Both had valid US visas, but they were nonetheless held for 24 hours with no ability to contact their family or their lawyer, while US Customs and Border Protection agents questioned them separately. Yes, of course CBP questioned a nine-year-old without an adult present. This is how America has worked for four years. And Donald Trump's chief immigration asshole, Stephen Miller, doesn't see any reason for that to change:

Mr. Miller, we're still trying to puzzle out exactly how all — or any — Americans are helped by the detention and separation of a couple of kids who both had valid US visas.

While the brothers were detained, the officers took away their passports and decided neither visa was really valid after all, which meant that Vladimir was instantly an "unaccompanied minor alien," so he was taken away and sent to a shelter in San Diego run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement — again without being allowed to talk to his brother, his family back in Haiti, or his US attorney, Milli Atkinson. Vladimir was finally allowed a phone call to his mother some time after he arrived at the facility Monday, Atkinson said. And now that he's in the limbo of unaccompanied minor alien status, Atkinson fears, Crom only knows how long it will take to reunite Vladimir with his family.

"This system is designed to protect children from trafficking. But it was clear from the moment he entered that this was not a trafficking situation," she said. "It's a long bureaucratic process and it could possibly be months before he can see his family again."

Yep, the good old "maybe it's child trafficking" excuse for family separations, which is how the Trump administration has made life hell not just for undocumented immigrants since the supposed "end" of family separation in 2018, but for legal immigrants and travelers, too. This is exactly the sort of shit the new administration needs to work on as part of the overhaul of immigration policy Joe Biden ordered yesterday — just a few days too late for Vladimir and his brother.