Democratic Rep. David Cicilline (R.I.) avoided calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Monday and showed displeasure at the way the immigration debate has shifted away from reforming policy at the border.
"Do you want to abolish ICE?" CNN's Kate Bolduan asked, noting some of Cicilline's Democratic colleagues who have said the agency should be abolished.
"The thing we have to really stay focused on is this family separation policy," he said.
Cicilline continued by saying "we have a completely broken immigration system," that should be fixed in a bipartisan way after addressing the issue of separating illegal immigrants from their children at the border.
Bolduan was not satisfied with his lack of response on the role of ICE.
"All the Democrats who are speaking out would agree with the things you said," she said. "But they're also taking it a step further ... they want to abolish ICE. Do you think that is smart?"
"Yeah, I mean I don't, look, I think you can't, look, I think we, I don't want to speak for other Democrats, but I certainly believe that we need to have customs and border control, and we need to be able to secure our border ... So I think there's enormous amounts of reform, but there's a function there that needs to take place. And how that is done and in what agencies, I think we can have lots of discussions about it," he said.
Bolduan asked Cicilline if he thought Democrats were misguided in calling for the immigration enforcement agency's abolition, noting Trump has jumped on it as a midterm issue.
"I think people have been speaking about it saying that ICE needs to be replaced with an agency that shares our values and needs to be built from the ground up," he said. "I don't think anyone is saying stop the functions of ICE."
Bolduan pushed back, saying that idea was "two sides of the same coin."
"They literally want to wipe out ICE and start with something else," she said.
Cicilline didn't deny as much was the case, but reiterated that the focus should be on permanently ending the practice of separating illegal immigrants from their children on the border.
Critics went after the Trump administration last month for enforcing a "zero tolerance" policy of prosecuting all immigrants who illegally cross the border and temporarily separating them from their children. The president signed an executive order June 20 to halt the practice, and he told Congress to change the law to implement a more permanent solution.
A number of Democratic lawmakers and candidates have taken the criticism further, directing their ire at ICE and calling for the agency's disbandment.
Bolduan suggested the disagreement among Democrats and the future of ICE was in part over word choice, asking if a call for "replacement and reform" was different from one to "abolish" ICE.
"I don't know," Cicilline acknowledged. "I think people use it in different ways."
"I think we should be very careful not to oversimplify this," Cicilline said, emphasizing that the organization serves an important function.