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Senate Democrats compared ICE to the Ku Klux Klan Thursday, saying the agency’s deportation officers have earned an evil perception among “many” people, and it’s up to the acting chief to change that.

“Do you see any parallels?” Sen. Kamala Harris asked of Ronald D. Vitiello, the acting director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, during a confirmation hearing for his nomination to become permanent director.

Mr Vitiello flatly rejected the comparison, saying there was no parallel, and demanded to know whether the senator was really trying to draw an equivalency.

The exchange was spurred by a series of questions Ms. Harris asked related to a social media post Mr. Vitiello made early this decade referring to the Democratic Party as “neo-Klanist.” He apologized for the post, calling it an attempt at a joke that he now realizes was hurtful and inappropriate.

“It was wrong to do,” he said.

Ms. Harris, though, asked him why the words were wrong, and he said it was because of the history of the KKK using violence and intimidation to achieve its social aims. That’s when the senator said the same perception exists of ICE.

“I see no perception that puts ICE in the same category as the KKK,” Mr. Vitiello retorted.

Ms. Harris’s line of questions drew a rebuke from Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

“Kamala Harris is trying to launch her 2020 campaign off of comparing ICE officers to the KKK, and it’s absolutely disgusting,” she tweeted.

Mr. Vitiello, a longtime Border Patrol agent and leader who was moved over to ICE this summer, has been tapped to replace former acting Director Tom Homan, who retired from ICE in June.

The nominee said he will defend his agency and its employees against “misleading rhetoric and misinformation” denigrating the job they do.

He didn’t name names, but some of ICE’s fiercest critics are on Capitol Hill, where the “Abolish ICE” movement gained steam over the summer.

Much of that anger is directed at ICE’s mission of detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, which is performed by the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division. But ICE also leads on counterfeiting, drug-trafficking, combatting criminal gangs and nabbing terrorists — duties run out of the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division.

Sen. Maggie Hassan, New Hampshire Democrat, suggested it might be time to split the agency apart and leave HSI off on its own, so it’s not dragged down by perceptions of the detention and deportation mission.

Mr. Vitiello said splitting was a bad idea.

In other testimony, he chided sanctuary cities for refusing to cooperate on deportations, but also said he wants ICE to be as responsive as possible to those jurisdictions that do cooperate.

He said he remembered his days as a Border Patrol agent when “you could hand a detainer to a deputy on a road stop and they would honor it.”

Mr. Vitiello also pushed back on criticism from leaders of local chapters of the National ICE Council, the labor union for ICE officers, who in a letter this week questioned his decision-making after Abolish ICE protesters staged violent demonstrations outside the agency’s building in Portland, Oregon.

Mr. Vitiello said he wasn’t at ICE until the middle of that situation, but said blame lay with Portland officials who refused to deploy their police to help out.

Ms. Harris, California Democrat, denied that, but said that “perception” exists and the chief must grapple with it.

“I’m very specific about what I’m asking,” she said. “Are you aware that there’s a perception that ICE is administering its power in a way that is causing fear and intimidation particularly among immigrants and specifically among immigrants coming from Mexico and Central America?”

She said the perception is hurting ICE’s ability to fulfill its mission, and said it’s also “harmful” to migrants attempting to reach the U.S.