Washington (CNN) Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said Monday that his fellow governors got a wake up call this weekend when they realized how a Department of Homeland Security shutdown would impact their states.

McAuliffe, a Democrat and the party's former chairman, said he urged fellow governors during this weekend's National Governors Association summit to call members of their state's congressional delegation and lobby them to fund the Department of Homeland Security this week. The agency's funding runs out Friday and governors will lose matching federal grants that help fund state and local law enforcement and emergency services agencies -- that revelation, McAuliffe said, was "eye-opening."

Mississippi's Republican Gov. Phil Bryant has already phoned his state's members of Congress -- all but one are Republicans -- to press them to fund the Department of Homeland Security without a touching President Barack Obama's controversial executive action on immigration, McAuliffe said.

McAuliffe, vice chair of the National Governs Association's homeland security committee, called DHS funding an issue that "affects all 50 governors" and said he's asked governors to sign a letter urging Congress to pass a so-called 'clean' funding bill.

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