>Apparently the administration was trying to punish people married to illegal immigrants, and all the people suffering through the legal and extremely slow immigration process get bundled in with them

They say that, but under Stephen Miller almost every single aspect of legal immigration has been made harder, slower and more expensive than before. After all Steve Bannon said the high number of Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley is not compatible with a civic society and that it's worth it for the US to lose economically while restricting legal immigration.

So what you encountered was a feature, not a bug.