As a division appears to be widening between congressional Democrats on how to respond to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, which have led to reports of extreme overcrowding and unhealthy conditions in migrant detention facilities along the southern U.S. border, Rep. Ayanna Pressley indicated that it is time to stop the infighting.

"I do not believe that that advances the cause, or helps our party, or strengthens the party going into 2020," Pressley told Jim Braude on Greater Boston Monday, referring to comments made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a recent New York Times interview, as well as the discussion surrounding those comments in the days since they were published.

In the interview, Pelosi said that Pressley and three other congresswomen who voted against a recent border funding bill "have their public whatever and their Twitter world. ... But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got." Pressley, along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, voted against the bill because they felt it did not go far enough in protecting the people being held in the detention facilities.

“I sat at the table and worked to improve that House bill to get in protections that were not there around health standards, and to offer some metrics of transparency and accountability,” Pressley said. She said her vote against the bill was based on her belief that the Border Patrol agency was fundamentally unaccountable.

Pressley and Rep. Joseph Kennedy III visited migrant detention facilities in El Paso and Clint, Texas last week during a trip organized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Both said they witnessed Border Patrol agents acting unprofessional.

“[Customs and Border Patrol], from the very moment we got there, was resistant to us gaining access to individuals [and] information,” Kennedy said. “The lack of professionalism all the way through was troubling, to say the least.”

Pressley said the women in the facility told them they had been in outdoor tents in the Texan heat prior to the congressional visit, and said it seemed they were moved indoors just before the group’s arrival. Some, she said, did not know where their children were, and many had not showered in 15 days.

Kennedy said the agents took the phones of the 12 congressional members on the trip and limited their interactions with immigrants who were held there. Pressley said that the congressional delegation was only able to gain access to the people they did interview because they “forced [their] way into a cell.”

Both emphasized that the facilities were designed for short-term holdings, not long-term detention, as they are being used now.

“For folks that are kids, women, [and] families that are claiming asylum, CBP was made for one set of responsibilities, and they’re being forced to doing something else,” said Kennedy. “That is not to excuse the way that it’s being done. But it does mean that the entire system is now failed. And what Trump is doing is trying to … heighten that pain, and use it as a way to get political concessions.”

Pressley said "it was clear that this is a culture that is corrupt, that is chaotic, that is callous."

When Braude suggested the same conditions would not be allowed to continue for white immigrants, Pressley agreed.

“That is a fact, in my view,” she said, and Kennedy agreed. Pressley also said that the system was not just “broken, but it’s actually doing what it was designed to do. This is about the criminalizing of people who are seeking asylum.”

Kennedy, for the first time, called for impeachment hearings to begin against Trump.

“I think it’s clear that the president has, unfortunately, committed impeachable offenses … and I think the proceedings need to begin,” he said.