WATCH: Rep. Castro recounts visit with Liam Ramos, 5-year-old detained by ICE

Children being held at an ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas, are "despondent and depressed," Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, said after a visit there this week.

Among the children he visited was Liam Ramos, a 5-year-old who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while returning to his Minneapolis home from school with his father. Federal agents instructed Liam, wearing a Spider-Man backpack, to knock on the door to his home to see if other people were inside. Department of Homeland Security officials said they were targeting the father, not the child. They accused Liam's father of abandoning his son and that others at the home "refused" to open the door.

Ramos and his family entered the U.S. legally, Castro said.

Watch Rep. Joaquin Castro's interview with PBS News co-anchor Geoff Bennett in the player above.

The case has drawn national attention and Democrats are calling for the father and son to be released, as broader scrutiny has grown around the ICE facility in Dilley, where the pair is detained alongside other families. Detainees there say that the prison has inadequate medical care, food contaminated with worms and limited access to drinking water.

WATCH: Detainees held at Texas ICE facility protest living conditions and treatment

"We saw the whole gamut, the whole spectrum of kids, a 9-year-old who was picked up in Austin who spent New Year's Eve getting processed into this jail," he recalled. "One young girl who kept coming up to me, a little girl who was hugging my leg, asking us to help get her out of there."

"These kids are very traumatized … and the parents themselves traumatized, grappling with how to help their kids, and they can't," he added.

Geoff Bennett spoke with Castro about his visit to the facility, why Liam Ramos and his father were detained and why Castro thinks ICE should be disbanded.

Here are some highlights from the conversation.

Geoff Bennett: You visited the Family Detention Center in Dilley, Texas, this past week, where 5-year-old Liam Ramos is being held with his father. What did his father tell you about their experience there and the conditions they're living under?

Rep. Castro: Liam is not doing well. He has been sleeping a lot. He hasn't been eating well and he's been very depressed. He misses his mom, he misses his classmates and he wants to go home.

Geoff Bennett: On the News Hour, we've reported on the conditions at Dilley, reports of food being served that's been contaminated with mold, and in some cases, worms. Did his father describe anything like that?

Rep. Castro: Yeah, his father said that he hasn't taken to the food. There were other kids there who said that they had food allergies, for example, that are not taken seriously, that they're served the same food over and over again. People did complain of things like worms occasionally in their food. And remember, these are jails. They're a type of prison. And we shouldn't have a 5-year-old who's committed no crime and a 2-month-old baby. We should not have them in prison in the United States of America.

Geoff Bennett: Well, say more about that, because Liam's story has captured national attention, but his plight reflects this broader pattern of families and children, young children, who were caught up in immigration enforcement.

Rep. Castro: Yeah, these are kids. We saw the whole gamut, the whole spectrum of kids, a 9-year-old who was picked up in Austin who spent New Year's Eve getting processed into this jail, the Dilley Detention Center. And other kids who were sobbing … one young girl who kept coming up to me, a little girl who was hugging my leg, asking us to help get her out of there. And so, these kids are very traumatized, many of them despondent and depressed. And the parents themselves traumatized, grappling with how to help their kids, and they can't.

Geoff Bennett: In the case of Liam Ramos and his family, do we know why their deportation was initially pursued even as they have an active asylum case?

Rep. Castro: We could not figure out why they were snatched up off the street. They had another asylum hearing coming up, I believe is what Liam's father said. And these were people that followed every rule. They used the CBP One app to get permission to come into the United States and wait while their asylum claim was being processed. So they followed the rules. They did it in an orderly way. They didn't rush the border. And still the Trump administration pick them up off the street and dump them in rural Texas.

Geoff Bennett: I know you believe ICE should be disbanded. What specific reforms do you believe are needed most?

Rep. Castro: Well, I think that really the ultimate answer is to disband ICE. Now, if you told me that we were still gonna leave them in charge of something like customs enforcement rather than immigration enforcement, that might be a compromise down the road, but they shouldn't be responsible for any kind of immigration enforcement. ICE was created during the war on terror and it mixed concerns about terrorism with immigration in a way that has painted every immigrant as a kind of criminal; assumed a criminality and a malevolence among immigrants that just isn't the case. There wasn't a single criminal among those 1,100 people that we visited with. And I know that because ICE is the one that told me that nobody there is a criminal.

Geoff Bennett: Do you see a political tide changing here? You know, Donald Trump, as you well know, he won the Electoral College, won the popular vote in this last election running largely on the issue of tougher immigration enforcement.

Rep. Castro: I think people see the inhumanity, they see what they think are fascistic ways of immigration enforcement. They see the abuse even of American citizens, the killing of two American citizens. They see that ICE wants to be able to go into people's homes with no warrant at all. They see agents knocking door to door, going from business to business, looking for brown skinned people and people that speak English with an accent. And yeah, I think most Americans see that and say, either that's not America, or I don't want that to be America.