President Donald Trump told top congressional leaders Tuesday during a bipartisan meeting at the White House that “if you don’t have the wall, you cannot have security” on the border.

Trump met with Republicans and Democrats from both chambers of Congress to discuss border security and a legislative fix for the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program ahead of a potential government shutdown on January 19.

Although both Democrats and Republicans called for a solution for illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, Democrats in the meeting staunchly refused to support any measure that included border wall funding.

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“I’d love not to build the wall, but you need the wall,” Trump told the Congress members, noting that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and Border Patrol agents told him, “If you don’t have the wall, you cannot have security.”

“They say, ‘Sir, without the wall, security doesn’t work. We’re all wasting time,'” Trump said. “Just can’t have it. It doesn’t work.”

The president noted that a large part of the border security problem arose because existing barriers “are in very bad shape” and urgently need to be fixed or rebuilt. Although Trump said the country doesn’t need a wall built on every inch of the border, he stressed that “we need a certain portion of that border to have the wall.”

“If we don’t have it, you can never have security. You can never stop that portion of drugs that comes through,” Trump warned. “You can never fix the situation without additional walls. And we have to fix existing walls that we already have.”

During the course of the meeting, Trump urged Republicans and Democrats to come together with a bipartisan spirit and find common ground to bring about immigration reform and border security.

Related: Rubio Tells Dems They ‘Can’t Shut Down the Government Over DACA’

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“I think it’s a very important thing, because our system is designed right now that everybody should hate each other, and we can’t have that,” Trump said. “The country is doing well in so many ways, but there’s such divisivenesses, such division. And I really believe we can solve that.”

Sen Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an immigration hawk, also urged his congressional colleagues to set aside their bitterness and repair the country’s divisions.

“I think on this issue there’s a lack of trust, there has been for many years — a lack of trust between Republicans and Democrats, a lack of trust among Republicans. Most fundamentally, a lack of trust between the American people and our elected leaders on not delivering a solution for many, many years about some of these problems,” Cotton said.

“And I hope that this meeting can be the beginning of building trust between our parties, between chambers, because I know for a fact all the Republicans around the table are committed to finding a solution,” Cotton added. “And I believe all the Democrats are as well.”

PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.