Immigration and Miami

Sorry we missed posting this right away but travel has been tiring.
We left our hotel in Bogota at 4am so that we could catch our 7:30 flight. It was not as difficult to convince the girls to go to bed early as we thought because they didn't get a very good night's sleep the night before. The hotel had some fruit and bread for us to eat and though tired we were all very excited to get going.
The van driver was very helpful in steering us through the airport as well as the city. He also had some bracelets (that the girls loved) that had either Colombian colors and indigenous symbols or Colombian/US flags. Since the girls would be dual citizens the two flags seemed appropriate to me. We were worried about weight limits and baggage numbers but no one gave us any problems.
The pilot or copilot either had a regular practice of this (and chose us) or saw our family and thought of doing something special , so he called the girls up to the cockpit before the plane took off for a picture (pictures to be posted later). The 4 hour flight to Miami was a bit late in arriving but it was spent mostly sleeping.
We arrived in Miami about 12:30. I was glad we decided to stay overnight in Miami. Not just because it was great to see Laisa and Eric, but because we found that immigration through Miami is not only slow but rather unprofessional. We were told by CHSFS (our agency) that once we were on US soil that the girls would be considered US citizens. We were also told that the girls would be interviewed to make sure that they were not being abducted. Neither of these things happened.
After going through the usual customs official, they took us to a large holding room filled with people and told us to wait. I knew that we were in for a long wait because the official that brought in our paperwork told another official that we were an adoption (using some paperwork code) and the official in the room rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. Most of the people in the room were Cuban immigrants and were waiting for the proper paperwork to officially enter the US. Most of the officers there spent as much time complaining about how much work they had to do that day (so many people) as they did actually working on things. We were not allowed to use cell phones in the entire customs/immigration area, so though we wanted to contact Laisa, our hotel, or other family we could not. The officers were mostly loud, rude and confrontational to everyone and often joked about what was happening in a condescending way. It was the kind of ugly American behavior that I was hoping to spare the girls for a while. We waited in that room for 3 hours. We tried asking questions but were brushed off. Eventually one of the officers asked why this group of six kept being put to the back of the line. He started processing our things and we were eventually able to leave. Upon leaving I was not going to question anything but it did not seem that we were processed correctly. The girls have a temporary immigrant status for 1 year. Either CHSFS told us an incomplete story or immigration did not do their work properly. We may have more to do to correct this than is usual.
The girls were wonderful about the waiting we had to do (in Miami and everywhere else in this process). It could have been much more unpleasant for all of us if the girls were difficult.
When we finally made it to the hotel we were glad to be able to call a couple of people. We were all very hungry because we had only eaten that fruit at 3:30 am or ate a little of the airplane food around 9 am. It was now close to 4 pm. Laisa and Eric came over to our hotel, exchanged gifts and we went out to dinner at a Colombian pizza place. The girls like pasta but for some reason are not fans (yet) of pizza. We found enough to eat and it was fun for the girls to go to a place that was closer to home (another gradual adjustment). Laisa was the center of attention as the girls argued over who would sit next to her. It was fun for the girls to speak freely in Spanish. The girls can be a whirlwind when they get excited about something/someone and Laisa and Eric saw this in full force.
After dinner we made our way to Miami beach so the girls could experience the ocean. This was another novelty for them. They had gone swimming many times but they had never seen the ocean before. Though it was dusk they played in the waves and we all enjoyed ourselves. They learned about waves, salt water and also learned about the stickiness of ocean water on their skin after swimming. Only the next day did they ask about sharks (tiburones). The girls needed something to physically wear them out after so much sitting and waiting. There's still more traveling so bedtime came faster than we wanted.