US reopens Columbus border port to Mexican cattle under screwworm checks

Cattle from Mexico crossed into the United States at Columbus, New Mexico, on Monday, October 26, 2026, the first time in nearly two years that the port had handled live cattle, according to local and national reports. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reopened the crossing under stricter rules meant to keep out the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating fly larva. On the first day, 620 head of cattle from the Mexican state of Chihuahua came through, the stockyard operator said, about half of a normal day's flow before the shutdown.

The New World screwworm is the larva of a fly that lays its eggs in open wounds on warm-blooded animals. The maggots feed on living flesh, and an untreated animal can die. The pest had been eradicated from the United States in the 1960s. Its spread north through Central America and Mexico led the United States to stop live cattle imports from Mexico, and its arrival in Texas and New Mexico this year has turned a trade question into a disease-control one.

The trade at stake is large. Columbus and Santa Teresa have historically handled about a third of the cattle the United States imports from Mexico, according to Border Report, which put the value of that trade at roughly $1 billion a year. Mexican ranchers in Chihuahua and nearby states raise young cattle that are sold across the border, fattened on US feedlots and slaughtered there. When the ports close, Mexican sellers lose a market and US feedlots lose a supply of animals.

The USDA has chosen to reopen one port at a time and to raise volumes only as the safeguards prove themselves. Officials have also said plainly that checks at the border cannot stop the pest alone, because adult flies can cross on their own. That is why ranchers, hunters and pet owners in the border states are being asked to watch for wounds with maggots in them and report them quickly.

For Indian readers, the episode is a clear case of how one animal disease can shut a cross-border livestock trade worth a billion dollars a year, and how long and costly the road back is. It also shows the method trading partners use when a pest crosses a border: closure first, then testing and treatment at the source, then a slow, staged return.

Short-term: Volumes at Columbus start well below normal. Stockyards, truckers and border brokers in southern New Mexico regain some business, but the extra testing and treatment add time and cost for each animal.

Long-term: How fast the flow returns to normal depends on whether the outbreak in Texas and New Mexico is contained. New cases near the border, such as the beef cow confirmed in Otero County, New Mexico, on October 21, could slow or reverse the reopening.

Who is affected: Cattle ranchers in northern Mexico, US feedlot operators, stockyard workers and transport firms on both sides of the border, and US buyers of beef.

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