Question about API Documentation and Identifying a Contact from API Attributes

According to the API documentation with regard to the `unsubscribe` endpoint, a contact gains the attribute and value pair of status=unsubscribed, however when looking up a contact via the endpoint GET request of /contacts?email=<email_address>, there is no status attribute. I can see that I can search contacts based on a filter of status=unsubscribed, but if I'm doing a contact lookup in order to get the contact ID in order to unsubscribe or delete (documentation also states there should be a status=deleted attribute and value pair associated to the account), how can I tell if the contact is already unsubscribed or deleted (to not worry about actually making the request to unsubscribe and/or delete)?

It looks like the return payload includes permission_to_send having a value of unsubscribed would be a valid identifier. It also looks like only deleted contacts have the deleted_at attribute in their return value payload. The documentation doesn't really refer to this though. Can I get verification on this?