James Talarico Slams ICE as Donald Trump's 'Secret Police' But Doesn't Call for Its Abolition During Town Hall

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico made an eye-opening comment about ICE at a CNN town hall on October 14, saying that while he sternly believes that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is acting as President Donald Trump's "secret police," he doesn't believe the department should be abolished.

"We need Immigration and Customs Enforcement in this country, but that's not what we're seeing," he said. "What we've seen over the last year is a secret police force, and that's what we don't want in this country. We don't want masked men in unmarked vehicles coming through and terrorizing our communities."

The statement is notably to the right of some other progressive Democrats who are calling for ICE's abolition altogether. Texas Democratic congressional candidate Colin Allred has called for ICE to be abolished, while Rep. Christian Menefee said the department needs to be "torn down to the studs."

Talarico has called for ICE to shift its focus away from the mass deportation plans it has pursued under Trump.

In July, he said, "ICE should be cracking down on the cartels, not on our communities. ICE should be deporting gang members, not small business owners. ICE should be hunting down human traffickers, not moms and babies.”

In February, he said he wanted to "tear down this secret police force and replace it with an agency that is actually going to focus on public safety."

The 37-year-old Texas state rep. spent his CNN town hall positioning himself as a candidate prepared to work with both sides of the Senate, and directly called out former President Joe Biden in his remarks.

"If the Democratic Party is going after the good-paying oil and gas jobs here in Texas, I’m going to stand up against them," he said. "I’m going to call out Democrats like Joe Biden who failed us on our southern border because we need border security here in Texas."

He also walked back some of his more provocative comments, including a time he claimed God was "non-binary."

"When I said that, I was being provocative, and I want to admit that and come clean about that, but I think what I was saying is actually not controversial theologically," he explained.

The campaign stop was also notable because it was Talarico's first after a nasty case of the flu.

The candidate's brief absence from the campaign trail led to a wild conspiracy theory, pushed by Republican agitators online, that he had secretly checked into a mental institution.

The nine-day absence led Talarico's opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, to post, "Jimmy appears to be having a full-blown mental Tala-freak-out on the national stage. My campaign has a simple request: proof of life.”

Talarico addressed the conspiracy theory with CNN, saying, "I opened up social media and learned that I apparently had dropped out of the race, had flown to a mental hospital in Ohio, that I had died."

Talarico is leading in nearly every poll of the Texas Senate race, leaving Democrats optimistic that they could elect a Democrat from Texas to the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1988.