Yeah I tried 3 different cables but nothing worked sadly, kind of bummed by this.
It shows up as Android! in my device manager though, dunno what to do about that
Okay by the grace of god I was allowed to connect my device, apparently the latest version here
https://en.miui.com/unlock/download_en.html is completely broken. 5.5 doesn't have a miflash_unlock.exe nor a driver, but if you download the previous version
http://miuirom.xiaomi.com/rom/u1106245679/4.5.813.51/miflash_unlock-en-4.5.813.51.zip it has the driver which you can install, then you'll have to use 5.5 batch tool to try and flash your device since the flashtool in 4.5 is broken. whoopdedoo.
Then you'll be faced with a warning that you have to wait for 168 hours before you can unlock your bootloader. Honestly I would recommend people to skip all of this and to just return your phone.