EDINBURG, Texas (Border Report) — Texas state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa knows what it is like to be deported.

When he was a young boy living in South Texas with his undocumented mother, they were deported across the Rio Grande and lived in the Mexican border town of Reynosa for one year.

“I was deported when I was 5 years old, even though I was a U.S. citizen, because my mother was here as an immigrant illegally. Didn’t have the proper documentation, so she and I got deported into Mexico. We came back one year later,” Hinojosa told Border Report on Tuesday at his office in Edinburg, Texas

Hinojosa previewed the upcoming 89th Texas Legislature and gave his thoughts on the incoming Trump administration and its plans for mass deportations at the border.

“I do not support separating families, and I do not support separated children from their parents. It’s a very difficult issue,” Hinojosa said. “They have to focus on that and be very discretionary, but have some rigid rules as to not deporting people who have family here, who have children here, and who have been here for years. That would be very unfair to many of these families who really don’t know Mexico and don’t know other countries. Some of them have been here for years — 15 years, 10 years, 20 years — I don’t think they should be deported at all.”

Hinojosa called the year living in Mexico an “interesting experience” and one that shaped his life views.

It was the early 1950s and Hinojosa says he and his mother lived in what he called a “shack” that was “behind a cantina where you could hear the music till two, three o’clock, four o’clock in the morning.”

He used to watch the adults dancing through cracks in the wood. To date, the 78-year-old longtime Texas lawmaker has a reputation as an impressive dancer, gliding and spinning partners with ease. Meanwhile, his father was a truck driver in McAllen, who spent the year putting in paperwork and requests until he was able to get his wife and son back into the United States legally.

Aside from dancing, he said what he learned from the experience was how volatile and dangerous the border can be for those who live here. And the trauma that family separation causes.

And as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office in a couple weeks, Hinojosa says he does not believe that families will be targeted for deportations and he hopes that only undocumented criminals and those who pose a threat to the United States will be sent south of the border, as Trump has so far indicated.

“When the wife with children are deported, and the children are U.S. citizens who have been attending school here, it is very traumatic. So this is why we have to be extremely careful. Certainly, that’s not under my control as the federal government, but the reality is they have to be more focused and leave some of these families alone.”

Trump has promised mass deportations when he returns to the White House, but has said federal officials will target those with criminal backgrounds and pose a threat to the United States.

Hinojosa hopes federal officials realize the “trauma” deportation can cause young minds.

“Help them become U.S. citizens or legal residents because most of them are gainfully employed in our construction companies and are cleaning our yards, working in our hotels. It’s important that we are not just blindly deporting families who have been here for years and children that are U.S. citizens,” he said.

Dozens of bill have already been filed ahead of the start of next Tuesday’s Texas Legislature and many are immigration-related.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is asking for an additional $3.5 billion in state funds for border security. Texas already spent over $11 billion on border security through Operation Lone Star, which started in 2021.

Hinojosa says lawmakers will consider the request. He says immigration and border security is a “top issue” among lawmakers.

“One of the unknown factors right now is the federal government. President-elect Trump will probably be able to reimburse the state of Texas on some of the monies that we have invested in border security. It’s a huge responsibility. It is expensive, and at the end of the day, it is a federal government responsibility to secure our borders,” he said.

Hinojosa says the Texas Legislature will have a $22 billion budget surplus to work with this regular session, which runs through June 2.

Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.