Sheriff officials from the entire Southwest United States have agreed to form the Southwest Border Sheriff's Coalition.

It is the result of a two-day sheriffs' conference that wrapped up in El Paso Friday that was hosted by the Texas Border Sheriffs' Coalition.

The new Southwest Border Sheriff's Coalition brings together sheriffs' departments in 26 counties along the border in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to act as one voice, to help combat crime along the border.

"If we can get the sheriff from San Diego, Calif., all the way to Brownsville, Texas, talking the same subject with one voice, 'we need help,' we can help reduce the problems on the border," said Sheriff Leo Samaniego, of El Paso County.

Sheriff's departments along the U.S.-Mexico border share the same kind of problems associated with the international border including standoffs with drug smugglers and illegal immigration.

Several border sheriffs sat down with KFOX reporters and shared their views about forming a new coalition.

"We are involved with the border patrol already because very often in the rual areas along our border it's the sheriffs and the border patrol agents who are there," said Sheriff Harold Carter, from Imperial County, Calif.

Carter told KFOX that he knew firsthand that the federal government has not provided the U.S. Border Patrol with sufficient resources to be able to fully protect the border.

However, Carter said, by urging Congress to allocate more federal funds to go toward border communities, border sheriffs and border patrol agents can better combat the violence.

"We learned that lesson in 2001, in 9/11, that there was a lot of uncoordination and our response to that was not what it should have been because we were not cooperating," said Carter.

Sheriffs' officials also said that forming the Southwest Border Sheriff's Coalition would only be a temporary fix until the federal government figures out what it is going to do on a national level to develop a policy or law to control not only illegal immigration but border violence.

Another issue discussed at the border sheriffs' conference was the Operation Linebacker initiative, which shared information and ideas with border patrol agents and other federal officers.