Rancher Johnny Mestas doesn’t want people to get too nervous about the New World screwfly, a fly whose parasitic larvae can eat cattle alive. The 74-year-old said he had already suffered two heart attacks during his long farming career in southern Colorado’s arid San Luis Valley.
“Not everyone can be a farmer,” Mestas said. “You have to go half crazy. There are three factors to fight against: the market, the weather, and your neighbors.”
Half-mad or not, Mestas is concerned about a new twist in the ongoing screwworm saga: the U.S. government’s plan to reopen parts of its southern border to Mexican livestock on Monday.
Cattle trade with Mexico has been cut off on and off since November 2024 to prevent the spread of screwworm, and the current border closure will take effect in July 2025. But next week, the Mexican-Sonoran cattle border will reopen in Douglas, Arizona.
The issue has reignited a decades-old debate over protectionism within the cattle industry. Several U.S. cattle producers say they are competing with Mexican ranchers and U.S. meat processors as beef prices for U.S. consumers soar.
Mexican producers are optimistic that reopening the country’s borders could halt a year-long financial hemorrhage. Álvaro Bustillos, president of the ranchers’ union in Mexico’s Chihuahua state, is hopeful that a successful reopening in Sonora state could mean a resumption of cross-border trade with the region. Border closures nearly wiped out his business.
“We had to lay people off,” Bustillos told CNN. “It took years to build the team. It took years to build relationships. This isn’t just about trading cattle. This is about family bonds.”
But U.S. ranchers warn they too are bleeding. One of the most vocal voices in the livestock industry opposing reopening borders is Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF, a national association of independent cattle and sheep farmers. Bullard, a former rancher from South Dakota, talks about screwworms as part of a broader crisis facing American ranchers: an influx of cheap cattle and beef from Mexico.
“In just over one generation, we wiped out half of the cattle producers in this country,” Bullard said in an interview with CNN. “It is a threat to our national security because it displaces domestic production in the United States and increases our dependence on foreign sources.”
U.S. authorities had chosen to open the border in Sonora due to its high industrial standards and low number of screwworm incidents. However, although the first screwworm infestation was reported in Sonora a few days earlier, this single case does not appear to have slowed the USDA’s plans. The agency announced Thursday that it intends to move forward with reopening.
Even before the first case was reported in Sonora, many U.S. ranchers like Mestas were wary of reopening the border. It’s not just because they’re concerned about the possibility of screwworms invading Mexican cattle.
U.S. ranchers who don’t rely on Mexican cattle are concerned that bringing foreign livestock into the country could lower cattle prices, which are currently at historic highs. While U.S. consumers have suffered from high beef prices for more than two years, the soaring livestock prices have come as a relief to ranchers, who now feel like they’re finally getting paid fairly for their work.
“I’ve made some real money these past few years!” Mestas said, looking a little surprised. “For years, we were basically always breaking even.”
Beef prices, along with the broader cost of living, are also a salient political issue heading into the 2026 midterm elections. Jenna Stanton, director of policy for the United States Cattlemen’s Cattlemen’s Association (USCA), told CNN that many ranchers see the Trump administration’s push to open borders as an attempt to ease market pressures and lower beef prices.
The White House had previously quadrupled imports of low-tariff Argentine beef to lower prices, angering U.S. ranchers. On Friday, the president announced the United States would import 300,000 tons of beef to “give room for the Great American Cattle Herd to grow again while lowering prices for Americans.” The decision quickly drew criticism from livestock industry groups.
“There are midterm elections to win this fall, and frankly they are losing,” Stanton said. “They’re trying to pull as many levers as they can.”
CNN asked the USDA whether beef prices and the upcoming midterm elections will have any impact on the decision to reopen the Port of Douglas. In response, the agency sent CNN an op-ed by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that made no mention of the election or beef prices.
“If we determine there is an imminent threat to domestic herds, we will not hesitate to immediately pause reopening,” Rollins said. “Protecting America’s livestock has always been our top priority, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to support ranchers who raise their livestock and eliminate it once and for all.”
Bill Winders, an agricultural historian at the Georgia Institute of Technology, says calls for economic protectionism by some ranchers and animal health crises like screwworms often go hand in hand. Bullard’s group, R-CALF, similarly advocated for closing the border with Canada during the early 2000s, when mad cow disease, a fatal brain-destroying disease, broke out among Canadian livestock. Its closure lasted more than two years.
“Moments like this are often exploited by organizations interested in protectionism,” Winders said. “And that can often help their position, even in the short term.”
Winders points out that R-CALF is just one part of a larger cattle supply chain. Many other agricultural groups also support a phased reopening, including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), a trade group for ranchers and feed producers, including those that rely on Mexican livestock.
The NCBA did not respond to multiple requests for comment from CNN, but said in a statement posted online that reopening the border “will help normalize cattle operations in border states and across the Southern Plains.”
Derrell Peale, a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University, is skeptical of R-CALF’s claims that closing borders would benefit the U.S. livestock industry. Peel, an expert on Mexico’s cattle trade, told CNN that screwworms are not the main driver of soaring cattle prices and that he sees the issue as a fig leaf for a broader anti-free trade agenda.
Prices are soaring, he said, because the U.S. herd — the total number of cows and calves in the country — is at a 75-year low due to years of frequent and severe droughts.
This lack of supply is driving up prices, not just for screwworms. “Regardless of border closures, (U.S.) cattle prices would have been at record values,” Peel said.
Meanwhile, Mexican ranchers have suffered losses of up to $1,000 per animal since the livestock trade border was closed, Peel added.
One of the ranchers, Mr. Bustillos, head of the Chihuahua state union, refused to put into dollars the amount he lost due to the border closure.
“I lost a lot of money,” Bustillos said. Border closures for the cattle trade “destroyed market dynamics.”
He also worries about his colleagues in the U.S. meat packaging industry. Many of them rely on Mexican exports for their income. Cows that come to the United States to be made into steaks and are fattened on American corn are now fed, slaughtered and packaged in Mexico before being shipped to the United States as boxed beef. Mexico exported more than 22% of its boxed beef to the United States this year, according to USDA data.
U.S. meatpackers are responding with cuts. Last week, Tyson Foods, a major meat processing company, announced it was closing plants in Illinois and Utah and considering selling a facility in Washington, citing “one of the most historic cattle shortages this country has ever experienced.”
“The[Mexican]cattle had to go somewhere. What the United States doesn’t understand is that they’re going to give Mexico all their industrial influence,” Bustillos said.
Peel said Mexico has significantly increased its beef export capacity over the years. He warned that the disruption caused by border closures could be prolonged.
“The fact that[Mexico]is absorbing exportable cattle that it currently doesn’t export will probably lead to changes in the supply chain,” Peel said, “which may become more permanent in nature.”
As for animal health risks, many proponents point out that screwworms entered the United States through parasitized wild animals or through the flies themselves while the border was closed to the cattle trade.
Sam Garcia, a Mexican-American rancher and scientist who raises cattle in Sonora, told CNN that livestock entering the United States are inspected multiple times for screwworms before being immersed in chemical baths.
While high-priced cattle may have given some U.S. cattle producers leeway, ranchers who spoke to CNN emphasized that high prices do not guarantee easy riches. Farming remains difficult and often unprofitable, especially for family farms.
“Can we stop the bloodshed for American ranchers?” asks Cooper Little, director of the Texas Independent Cattlemen’s Association.
That’s a question he often asks when he talks to his organization’s thousands of small ranchers, many of whom are elderly and struggle to stay afloat despite high prices and rising incomes.
Mr. Little, who speaks with an unmistakable Texan tone, saw the border closure as an opportunity to bring the U.S. livestock industry home and stop the bleeding. Without competition from Mexican producers, people may be “interested in getting into the beef industry and continuing the legacy of their fathers and grandfathers.”
“It’s a tough life,” Little says of the ranch. “And it gets harder every year.”
J. Strom Birdwell, who runs his family’s ranch on the Texas Gulf Coast, says daily cattle production is hard work.
As expensive as cattle are, land is even more valuable. Birdwell said he has struggled in recent years to keep his pasture leases alive as younger ranching families choose to cash out and sell rather than stay in the cutthroat world of farming.
These struggles are familiar to Mexican ranchers. Garcia, a Mexican-American who raises cattle in Sonora, insists that despite the conflicting interests, U.S. and Mexican cattle producers are more similar than different.
“I can tell you,” Garcia said. “I have more in common with American ranchers than with New York politicians.”
“The difference is that labor may be cheaper in Mexico, but there aren’t as many government incentives to increase productivity,” he said.
Another common problem is water scarcity. Ten years ago, Johnny Mestas of Colorado said he nearly lost his herd after a costly dispute over water rights. Drought is a potential threat to ranch life and will only be exacerbated by climate change.
“Some of my neighbors think I’m some rich guy, but they don’t know half the terrible things we went through,” Mestas said.
