The previous president joined Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas on Wednesday, partly for the governor’s primary campaign event news conference, but mostly as way to publicly continue airing his many grievances. This diary will not focus on his continued lies about immigrants, about the southern border, or about the 2020 presidential election, which he sought to overturn through a deadly insurrection after losing to President Joe Biden.

Instead, this diary will focus on the hundreds of families who continue to remain separated as a direct result of that president’s racist anti-immigrant and anti-asylum policies. Instead, I’m going to focus on the fact that the day he appeared at the border, court documents filed as part of ongoing litigation against his family separation policy revealed that the parents of 368 children ripped from their loved ones by that president’s administration have still not been located.

Following contact and reunification efforts under the Biden administration, the known number of children whose parents have not yet been located is down from 391 in May, the date of the previous court filing in the litigation. NBC News reports that in this week’s filing, attorneys and advocates tasked by the court with reunification efforts said they’d located the parents of another 23 kids since that filing. But due to the previous administration’s cruelty, there remains uncertainty around exact numbers and reunification statuses.

“Just because the parents have not been located by the lawyers, however, doesn’t mean the families remain separated,” NBC News reported. “The parents of some of those 368 children may already have reunited with theiir[sic] children on their own, but because of poor record keeping by the Trump administration in 2017 and 2018, when families were systematically separated at the southwest border, their status and whereabouts have remained unknown.”

So they might be with their parents … but they might also not be. At this moment, organizations and advocates, despite their backbreaking work digging through government files and going door-to-door in Central America in search of families, can’t say for sure. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) estimated in 2019 that the previous administration kidnapped nearly 5,500 children at the southern border beginning in summer 2017, months before any official policy was in place. A progress report submitted by the Biden administration’s family reunification task force estimated that 2,100 children total may still be separated. Again, “estimated,” and “may” because of the previous administration’s cruelty. Additionally, officials are reviewing files from the first day of that administration through summer 2017, which could reveal even more separations.

“While we are making steady progress, there are still far too many families who have not been located, as well as thousands who must be re-contacted to determine their wishes now that the Biden administration is willing to help,” ACLU lead attorney Lee Gelernt told NBC News. Perhaps folks might assume that separated families would automatically want to be reunited in the U.S., but it’s important to remember these families have been traumatized, attorney Ann Garcia told CNN, noting “that some parents are nervous about encountering US Customs and Border Protection again since their last encounters with agents resulted in their children being taken from them.” 

But the right thing to do is to reach every single one and offer them that chance, and if they wish it, return them to the U.S. through humanitarian parole, like Sandra Ortíz and her son Bryan Chávez in May. “Ortíz, 48, from central Mexico, had packed her bag days earlier: three outfits, a pair of shoes and the birth certificate of her son, whom she hadn’t seen since they were separated at the border in 2017, when he was 15,” The Washington Post reported at the time. “He’s now almost 19.”

Seneca Family of Agencies has been the agency that under a court settlement has also been offering free mental health services to formerly separated families currently in the U.S., NBC News reported earlier this month. 

”At our first stop, a stroke of luck: The mother of a boy who was separated from his dad was home,” Jacob Soboroff reported. He had traveled with outreach workers as they sought out more families. Reaching one home, he said that he stayed behind in the vehicle as two workers, Chandra Allen and Veronica Ledesmal, went to speak to the mother. They didn’t want to frighten anyone at home. Their efforts worked. “The woman told the outreach workers that she would be interested in the services they were offering,” he reports.