When you rebuild a feature with a node that is unpublished, it will automatically be published.
The reason for this is that node_object_prepare set node->status on true when node->nid does not exists.

function uuid_node_features_rebuild($module) {
110   $nodes = module_invoke($module, 'uuid_features_default_content');
111   if (!empty($nodes)) {
112     module_load_include('inc', 'node', 'node.pages');
113 
114     foreach ($nodes as $data) {
115       $node = (object)$data;
116       node_object_prepare($node);

Does anybody know why node_object_prepare is used?