Enable wifi on a locked phone?

I have an iPhone 12. I have incorrectly entered my passcode 9 times and am 1 attempt away from erasing all my data. Fortunately, I have access to my iCloud. I was told by support if I could increase my storage in iCloud, it would recover the pictures before I had to wipe the device. It started to do this last night by uploading the photos from the last two weeks and then stopped. I did notice that it wasn't connected to wifi but it started to upload anyway. So now I am being told this is because I need to be connected to wifi. So my question is why isn't my iPhone connecting to the trusted wifi networks?