Even after President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting family separations at the border, immigration attorneys and advocates say there’s no clear path in sight to reunify already-separated families.

If parents are able to reunite with their children — and that’s a big if, McAllen attorney Carlos M. Garcia said — it could be months before that happens.

The order doesn’t stop the zero-tolerance policy that calls for all adults caught crossing the border illegally to be prosecuted for illegal entry, but it would keep families together in custody. It also doesn’t lay out a process for reuniting parents with children who’ve already been separated.

In fact, there are plenty of scenarios in which parents don’t get reunited with their children. Theoretically, Garcia said, a parent could be deported while his or her child is still awaiting a sponsor at a federal processing center, or while the child works through civil immigration court proceedings.

Since the crisis began in the spring, the process for reuniting children with their parents or relatives has been “as confusing and frustrating as possible,” said Zenen Perez, spokesman for the Texas Civil Rights Project, an immigration nonprofit that interviews immigrants who have been apprehended at the border.

“There is no system. That’s the problem,” Perez said. “In the beginning, if someone asked, 'How do I contact my child,' there was literally no answer. Just recently they started giving [the immigrants] a piece of paper with a phone number.”

Trump administration officials haven’t had a clear plan on how to reunite thousands of children with their parents since the advent of the zero-tolerance policy in April. Since then, more than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents.

“This policy is relatively new,” said Steven Wagner, acting assistant secretary at the federal Department of Health and Human Services. “We’re still working through the experience of reunifying kids with their parents after adjudication."

An official with HHS said children who’ve already been separated from their parents won’t be immediately reunited with their families while adults remain in federal custody.

There's some doubt that the family separations will actually stop under the executive order. Efrén Olivares, racial and economic justice director for the Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a news release that families will still end up separated while adults go through the criminal proceedings under the zero-tolerance policy.

“To stop family separations once and for all, the administration must end the zero-tolerance policy,” Olivares said. “If parents are still being prosecuted as criminals and put in prisons, they will be separated from their children.”

For parents and children who’ve already been separated, there’s a difficult, bleak road ahead, Perez said.

"We’ve heard from the previous ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] director that some of these parents will likely never see their children again. I don’t doubt that,” Perez said. “I don’t doubt that when this crisis is over, there will be many parents who won’t ever see their children again. And that is something perpetrated purposely by this administration."

When kids are taken away to be processed through the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, parents are given a flyer with information on how to locate their children, immigration attorney Jacqueline Watson said.

There’s a number for an ORR parent hotline and the ICE call center, as well as two emails to reach ORR and ICE staff. The flyer urges parents to have their child’s full name, date of birth, country of origin and their alien registration number handy for the call operator if possible.

But these parents don’t always have access to phones, much less email. And Garcia, the attorney, said parents he spoke to weren’t told their children’s registration numbers — they weren’t even given a flyer.

“They don’t know where their children are. They don’t know how to get in touch with them,” he said. “The people I’d talked to yesterday hadn’t received any communication from the government.”

In other cases, parents weren't told that their children were being taken. In one instance, a mother was told her daughter was being taken away for a bath but she never returned, according to a statement from the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Catholic Charities of Fort Worth said Wednesday that it has taken in a dozen children who have crossed the border recently, said Heather Reynolds, executive director.

Eight of the 12 children came to the nonprofit shelter after being split from their families at the border by federal officials, Reynolds said. The other four crossed the border by themselves and were detained.

All 12 children are from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Reynolds said. Half are boys and half are girls, and they range in ages from 5 to 12, she said. The shelter is designated to work with children up to age 13, Reynolds said.

Catholic Charities of Fort Worth operates a 32-bed facility, but the majority of the beds are for children in foster care with Child Protective Services. In 2014, Catholic Charities began serving unaccompanied children who had crossed the border at the request of the federal government, Reynolds said.

The facility provides the immigrant children with clothes and medical exams. They also work to either reunify the child with a parent or find another family member or relative already in the U.S. who can sponsor the child through the immigration process. If no parent or relative can be found, then foster care is provided, Reynolds said.

“Typically those children stay with us for two to four weeks,” she said.

When the children arrive at the shelter, the staff determines if there is a family member in the U.S., Reynolds said. If the nonprofit identifies a relative in the U.S., the child will go to that relative “after a whole series of verification steps occur,” she said. The child will stay with that family member until the immigration hearing determines the child’s status.

If the parent is deported and wants the child to return to the family’s home country, then Catholic Charities works to ensure the child and parent are deported together in the best-case scenario.

Reynolds said she was happy to hear the policy of splitting up families at the border had been rescinded Wednesday. “We want to uphold the dignity of these kids," she said.

Since May 24, the Texas Civil Rights Project has interviewed over 350 families in McAllen who have been separated by federal agents, with a total of 390 children. The civil rights team does interviews with as many parents as possible before their court hearing.

“That’s only one processing center,” Perez said. “We’re hoping to expand our intakes to those other cities. Right now, it’s just McAllen and McAllen is going to be the city that sees the most volume in general.”

Trump administration officials have said they have to screen adults who crossed the border with minors to ensure that the children are not victims of human trafficking.

Perez said his organization interviews immigrants to get their contact information and “as much as possible” to connect them with immigration attorneys. They have also collected information about specific cases for petitions they filed with the Inter-American Commision on Human Rights, an independent body that investigates human rights abuses.

"I’ve been working in immigration for many years. I’ve seen many horrors perpetrated on immigrants by many administrations,” Perez said. “And this is one of the worst instances of human rights abuses I’ve ever seen."

Updated June 21, 9:30 a.m., with chart showing where Texas houses immigrant children.

The Associated Press and The New York Times contributed to this report.