Wow, I've never heard of terminated employees being able to keep their corporate laptops before. Did IT at least wipe them first?

Interesting. That's what's happened in the last two companies I've worked for when they did layoffs. I'm typing this message from my ex-corporate laptop right now...

The process was that IT locked the laptop until the severance package was signed, then you got a code that let you reboot and reinstall MacOS.

Quite often it's literally cheaper for them to let employees keep the laptop (sometimes for a token price) after wiping than it is to process it for reuse, just because bureaucracy is that expensive.