Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin would not confirm that the department he leads would comply with court orders, after a senator asked him whether the agency was committed to doing so.

The comments, made in an almost two-hour-long hearing Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, were made in a heated exchange between Mullin and Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut and the ranking member of the subcommittee.

Murphy asked Mullin whether he would ensure the Department of Homeland Security complies with court orders, pointing to a Minnesota judge’s January ruling that stated the department had failed to follow nearly 100 orders. In response, Mullin said his department would “never break the Constitution” or break the law, but did not explicitly commit to complying with court rulings.

When Murphy pressed Mullin, saying that his response did not mean the department would adhere to court orders, Mullin said that he couldn’t answer the question.

“If we didn’t think courts were politicized, then I would probably be able to answer that,” Mullin said. “But we see courts over and over again that use their bench for their political opinion, not just rule of law.”

Murphy pushed back multiple times, asking Mullin if he picked which specific court orders the department would obey and if he meant that the department would not follow every court order. Mullin, who was at his first hearing on Capitol Hill since being confirmed to lead DHS, pushed back.

“Senator, don’t start putting words in my mouth, that’s not what I said,” Mullin said at one point in the exchange. “I said I will never break the Constitution, we’re going to enforce the law.”

Murphy looked around at the lawmakers on the committee, telling them at one point that regardless of their party, they should be “really, really freaked out.”

But Mullin continued to push back and avoid committing to following court orders.

“We should be really concerned about the rulings that come out of the courts and how often they get overturned,” Mullin said.

Later in the hearing, Murphy read Mullin’s initial statements back to him, with the senator saying he had been “chilled” by the earlier interaction.

Mullin defended his earlier comments and, in response to a question from Murphy asking whether both parties should follow court orders, said that “what he would love to see is the court do their jobs and not play politics.”

The interaction was one of the most heated exchanges between Democratic senators and the secretary on the first of two days of hearings for Mullin on Capitol Hill, where he’s expected to discuss DHS’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Mullin is scheduled to appear before the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday morning.