Authorities in West Texas have begun to see illegal immigrants aiding criminal networks in the stealing of truckloads of valuable oil and materials from the nation’s largest oilfields in the Permian Basin.

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), whose district spans 800 miles of the Texas border, organized federal and local law enforcement in the region Friday to come up with a plan of attack as the largest U.S. oilfield, the Permian Basin, continues to get hit by thieves. The matter is not only a border security matter but an energy security problem.

“The bottom line is the border crisis is expanding, and it is morphing into other things, and part of that is you have folks that are Cuban nationals that are kind of settling out in West Texas and in some cases are part of this increase in oil theft,” Gonzales told the Washington Examiner on Friday in a phone interview, who later added that Cuban involvement was “growing.”

Oil theft in the region is no small problem, and the potential for it to destroy oil and gas jobs in the United States is a “very serious, existential threat to our national security,” according to Matt Coday, president and founder of the Oil & Gas Workers Association.