I spent time in Marseilles in the early 1990’s in order to install some systems in a bank. We would work all night and go home during the day to our hotel to sleep.
Every morning we noticed that there were missing parts on a lot of the vehicles parked on the street.
The bank employees said that the problem had come in phases. First, the problem was that whole cars would be stolen to be shipped to north Africa.
Once there was a substantial number of cars in service in north Africa, then the Africans would put in orders for specific parts that were needed. The guys in Marseilles would steel the requested parts from the cars parked on the streets.
Sounds like Mexicans on the border.