WASHINGTON — House Republicans laid out a national security agenda that seeks to turn the conversation away from Donald Trump's contentious presidential campaign and toward concrete policies for securing America's borders and defeating extremist groups.

Speaking Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relations, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said Trump's proposed plan to ban all Muslims from coming into the country isn't practical.

"You can't ban an entire race or religion from coming into the country," McCaul, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said. The U.S. needs to properly target the threat to make sure attackers don't get into the country, McCaul said.

The billionaire candidate also has pledged, if elected, to bring back the use of waterboarding — it causes the sensation of drowning — and worse against captured militants. Congress has outlawed waterboarding along with other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.

But Rep. Mac Thornberry, the Texas Republican who chairs the Armed Services Committee, said he does not believe the military will carry out an order that runs contrary to the law. Without mentioning Trump by name, Thornberry advised anyone who aspires to be commander in chief to "quit talking" about interrogation techniques or any other sensitive national security matters.

"Quit saying what we're not going to do," Thornberry said, referring to enhanced interrogation. "So I am not for putting a bunch of things into law that we're not going to do. I'm for leaving them guessing."

The national security agenda is a key plank in a broader policy agenda House Speaker Paul Ryan is crafting that seeks to unite Republicans amid the frequent distractions triggered by Trump's unconventional presidential campaign.

The plan's focus on immigration and border protection tracks with one of the cornerstones of Trump's platform. Ryan calls for the use of "high fencing" along border areas, but steers clear of the billionaire candidate's signature issue: building a wall to keep people from illegally entering the United States from Mexico. Ryan has rejected Trump's call for banning Muslims.

Ryan, who spoke briefly and left without taking questions, blamed President Barack Obama for a litany of foreign policy failures that Ryan says have frayed America's alliances and emboldened its enemies. Obama "shrugged off" the Islamic State group, Ryan said, and he called the president's response to Russia's aggressiveness "timid."

"America has to set the standard," Ryan said. "Otherwise countries will pursue their short-term, narrow interests."

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the failure to understand Russian President Vladimir Putin's intentions is "the greatest intelligence failure" since the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

The national security plan calls for accelerating the deployment of fencing, technology, air assets and personnel along U.S. borders. The U.S. has repeatedly failed to eliminate serious vulnerabilities in the immigration system, according to the plan, which cites the inability to verify comprehensively whether visitors to the U.S. actually leave when their visas expire.

Ryan outlines in broad strokes a series of measures for defeating the Islamic State group and other extremists. He advocates relying on "local forces" in Iraq and Syria to defeat militants but indicates Republicans must be prepared to deploy U.S. troops if necessary.

"We cannot take options off the table, because doing so telegraphs weakness to our enemies and emboldens them," he said.

Ryan's policy blueprint is aimed at defining what Republicans are for, not just what they are against.

The few specifics Trump has offered on defense and foreign policy issues have rattled Republicans and unnerved U.S. allies. In addition to waterboarding, Trump has said he would order the military to kill family members of extremists who threaten the U.S., a position he has since retreated from after being heavily criticized. And he's questioned whether NATO and America's other key alliances have become obsolete.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said Ryan's plan means nothing as long as Republicans "embrace the staggering recklessness of a GOP standard-bearer who has called for the U.S. to torture prisoners and murder the families of suspected terrorists."