In February, I gave you all a quick primer on the history of the United States’ battle against the devastating little pest known as the New World Screwworm (NWS).
US cattle herds have already hit a 75 year low, thanks to a series of unfortunate events, ranging from droughts to incentivized slaughter and Biden’s hostile anti-ranching policies. The last thing the beef industry or the consumers who rely on it needed was one more pressure on the market to force a tremendously expensive commodity price higher.
The arrival of an NWS infestation could do that easily, and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was proactively swinging into action to fend off the arrival of the fly.
…This nasty, voracious bugger not only targets and decimates cattle herds. It’ll chomp on anything and it is just revolting.
…Screwworm flies lay their eggs in open wounds or membranes in warm-blooded animals. When the eggs hatch, the larvae burrow deep into the flesh with hook-like mouths, lending the pest its name. While they most frequently land on livestock and wild animals, they can also infest pets like cats and dogs, and even humans. Victims can develop large open wounds covered in maggots.
It’s treatable. But the rub for ranchers is that if screwworm reestablishes itself in the US, they’ll have to closely inspect their herds – a major challenge in Texas, where ranches can spread across hundreds of acres and labor is scarce. Sick cattle tend to hide away in brush, requiring fine-toothed surveillance to locate and treat them.
An outbreak could cost Texas cattle producers $732 million and deal a $1.8 billion blow to the state economy, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Texas, with its famous history of cattle drives and cattlemen, still has a bigger herd than any other state, with 12.1 million head — about 14% of total US inventory.
Rollins was starting with the deck stacked against her as the fly regained the territory lost and threatened to once again cross the Rio Grande from Mexico.
Michael Yon has been documenting the screwworm’s revival during his time in Panama, and he’s archived the inquiry he sent the Biden administration as early as 2021.
Big Honey Tolja pic.twitter.com/8fJZj8tLZW
— Michael Yon: Callsign BIG HONEY (@Michael_Yon) June 4, 2026
What Rollins did, within months of assuming her post, was shut down the importation of all cattle from Mexico, as reports of NWS infestation exploded and crept closer to the US border.
Secretary Rollins Takes Decisive Action and Shuts Down U.S. Southern Border Ports to Livestock Trade due to further Northward Spread of New World Screwworm in Mexico
The USDA also stepped up its efforts, working inside Mexico with its agricultural authorities.
Yesterday, Mexico’s National Service of Agro-Alimentary Health, Safety, and Quality (SENASICA) reported a new case of New World Screwworm (NWS) in Ixhuatlan de Madero, Veracruz in Mexico, which is approximately 160 miles northward of the current sterile fly dispersal grid, on the eastern side of the country and 370 miles south of the U.S./Mexico border. This new northward detection comes approximately two months after northern detections were reported in Oaxaca and Veracruz, less than 700 miles away from the U.S. border, which triggered the closure of our ports to Mexican cattle, bison, and horses on May 11, 2025.
While USDA announced a risk-based phased port re-opening strategy for cattle, bison, and equine from Mexico beginning as early as July 7, 2025, this newly reported NWS case raises significant concern about the previously reported information shared by Mexican officials and severely compromises the outlined port reopening schedule of five ports from July 7-September 15. Therefore, in order to protect American livestock and our nation’s food supply, Secretary Rollins has ordered the closure of livestock trade through southern ports of entry effective immediately.
“The United States has promised to be vigilant — and after detecting this new NWS case, we are pausing the planned port reopening’s to further quarantine and target this deadly pest in Mexico. We must see additional progress combatting NWS in Veracruz and other nearby Mexican states in order to reopen livestock ports along the Southern border,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins. “Thanks to the aggressive monitoring by USDA staff in the U.S. and in Mexico, we have been able to take quick and decisive action to respond to the spread of this deadly pest.”
The last victory had taken hundreds of millions of sterile flies released every week over decades to eradicate the flies in the Southwestern US, and those facilities, once the job seemed finished, were either closed or moved to Mexico, which then closed them. There is a single one left in Panama, cranking out 100M irradiated flies a week.
What Rollins and the USDA, along with state partners, have done in the meantime seems to have bought the Southwest breathing room. Models predicted the infestion would be here earlier.
Rollins notes that all models had shown NWS reaching USA more than a year ago but credits international efforts including sterile fly dispersal with slowing the advance.
“This gave us additional time to prepare,” she said.
Says federal resources are being sent to South Texas. https://t.co/kBzKsaGbvG
— Jonathan Richie (@JRichieTX) June 4, 2026
Expedited rebuilding of the facility in the US is scheduled to begin producing 100M /wk flies by next spring at the earliest. They’ve also given money to Mexico to retrofit a facility near the Guatemalan border that may come online this year for 300M flies/wk.
The announcement that the NWS had officially arrived in the US came yesterday after a bit of an awkward public tussle with local officials who had announced it earlier.
A case of New World screwworm has been detected in Texas, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Secretary Brooke Rollins confirmed the case Wednesday evening.
Outbreaks of the flesh-eating parasite have recently occurred within a hundred miles of the U.S. border; however, none were confirmed in Texas until today.
Rollins assured Texans that the case is being “fully contained” and the nation’s food supply is “100% safe.”
State Rep. Don McLaughlin (R–Uvalde) issued an urgent call to action on Monday regarding a potential outbreak of New World screwworm, stating it was detected a mile off of the U.S. border. In a letter to state leaders, he urged action to be taken to prevent the spread of screwworms to preserve livestock health across the state.
He was rebuffed by the USDA on X, and has since stated that perhaps “we should listen to our state representatives.”
Kinney County Judge John Paul Schuster declared a local state of disaster over the threat posed by the New World screwworm. The order from the border county activates local and interjurisdictional emergency management plans, authorizes use of all necessary county resources, and directs county officials to coordinate with state and federal agencies on surveillance, reporting, public information, and response.
The declaration is effective for up to seven days unless extended or renewed by the commissioners court. In addition, Kinney County asked that the governor temporarily relax certain state commercial‑feed regulations in the Agriculture Code to allow medicated “feed‑through” products used to control screwworm to be approved and deployed more quickly if normal licensing and labeling requirements would slow the emergency response.
https://t.co/rtxxcLlrHb
— Brandon Waltens (@bwaltens) June 4, 2026
Revolting.
The local guys know a screwworm-infested calf when they see one, and the feds affirmed the call shortly thereafter.
A case of NWS may have been detected in South Texas. The sample is now at USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, lowa for confirmatory testing. We will provide updates the moment results are available.
We have already activated personnel on the ground…
— Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) June 3, 2026
We have already activated personnel on the ground and are working with local partners.
What you can expect from us is transparency, candor, and most important — action.
Poor little fella.
BREAKING: “As of a little while ago, we have confirmed the first official case of New World Screwworm in Texas,” @USDA @SecRollins tells reporters.
It was found in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, a small South Texas community. pic.twitter.com/fktuwtrf2m
— Hannah Norton (@hannahdnorton) June 4, 2026
According to Sec Rollins, there is a full deployment of federal forces going into Texas at the moment.
Battlefield prep, I guess, now that it’s finally here.
A case of the New World screwworm may have been detected in South Texas, according to the USDA.
If not contained, the pest could devastate the cattle industry. The “tick riders” are on high alert. https://t.co/Y7rHLZ25Zn
— Texas Monthly (@TexasMonthly) June 3, 2026
These guys, the ‘tick riders,’ will be the first line of defense until millions of sterile flies can get in the air en masse.
A rancher found the week-old calf in a hog trap in March. Where its tail should have been was instead a wet, black mass. Maggots squirmed at the center of the necrotized flesh, and flies dotted its periphery. “This one,” says Doug Anderson, pausing the video and pointing to one fly in particular, “is the one I was worried about.”The grisly scene on his computer’s monitor stands in horrific contrast to the framed photos of Anderson’s smiling children on the wall of his office in Rio Grande City, about forty miles northwest of McAllen. Anderson is the supervisor of field operations for the Cattle Fever Tick Eradication Program, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
He oversees the “tick riders,” who patrol ranches along the Mexican border on horseback, inspecting cattle for pests, treating strays with pesticides, and watching out for livestock that have wandered across the border. They bring the foreign invaders in to be tested; if the cattle are free of diseases and bugs, the agency attempts to return them to their owners.
Now, it’s game on in a lot of wide-open country.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is leading America into the “Golden Age” as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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