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WSJ: USDA to Reopen Border to Mexican Cattle, Betting Screwworm Defenses Will Hold

The Wall Street Journal reports exclusively that imports will resume at Douglas, Ariz., in 30 days — and sources inform that USDA will make it official with a statement at 8 p.m. ET tonight.
 

Analysis  ·  July 24, 2026

USDA is lifting its more-than-yearlong ban on Mexican cattle imports, the Wall Street Journal reported exclusively Friday afternoon — a high-stakes bet that a rebuilt wall of screwworm defenses can protect U.S. herds while easing record beef prices. Sources inform that USDA will release a formal statement on the decision at 8 p.m. ET this evening.

The decision pits inflation politics against biosecurity risk: reopening the border is the fastest lever Washington can pull to rebuild cattle supplies, but it comes with New World screwworm cases still active in Texas.

What’s happening

Per the WSJ account by Patrick Thomas, trade will resume at the port of entry in Douglas, Ariz., in 30 days, with two additional New Mexico ports of entry to follow. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins framed the call as herd protection first, market relief second: “We have been trading with Mexico live cattle for a really, really long time. The border states rely on it, and we’re at a low herd number. It is time to safely open.”

The reopening comes with a hardened inspection regime. Imported cattle will pass through disinfectant dip vats at the port of entry, layered screening has been expanded, border surveillance has been stepped up, and USDA has accelerated construction of sterile-fly production facilities — the eradication workhorse, since female screwworm flies mate only once and sterile males collapse the population. Rollins says the situation is “under control.”

Of note: USDA has a similar plan months ago but then it was yanked back by Rollins. See the section below on what is different about the topic now than it was when the reopening decision was called back. 

Why the border matters

Mexico typically ships about one million feeder calves north each year — roughly 5% of all cattle processed in the U.S. — a trade flow that has run for more than a century. Those calves are fattened in U.S. feedyards, mostly across the Southwest, before moving to packing plants. Cutting off that pipeline since the trade was halted has deepened an already historic shortage of livestock, squeezing feedyards and packers and helping push retail ground beef to nearly $7 a pound and sirloin steak above $14.

The border was first closed in November 2024 after screwworm was detected in southern Mexico. Trade resumed briefly, then was shut again in May 2025 — and a phased reopening announced in July 2025 was scrapped after the fly was detected deeper into Mexico. That history is the caution flag: announced reopenings have been reversed before, and this one can be too if case counts turn the wrong way. The parasite, absent from the U.S. since the 1960s, was confirmed in a three-week-old Texas calf in June; dozens of U.S. cases have followed, all in Texas except one New Mexico dog.

Table 1. Key numbers behind the border reopening. Sources: The Wall Street Journal; USDA; government retail price data.

What USDA knows now that it didn’t months ago

The honest answer to why now: the department is acting on data it simply did not have when it last tried this. Four things have changed since the May 2025 shutdown and the aborted July 2025 reopening. 

One, USDA now has more than a year of intensified surveillance mapping exactly where the fly is — and isn’t — in Mexico and along the border, versus the near-blind posture of early 2025, when detections kept surprising the agency deeper north than expected.

Two, it has live U.S. outbreak experience. The June Texas calf detection was the stress test nobody wanted, but the response — dozens of cases identified and, so far, contained to Texas save one New Mexico dog — tells USDA its domestic detection-and-response playbook functions. In May 2025 that was theory; now it is field-tested.

Three, the sterile-fly weapon is materially bigger. The closure bought time to accelerate construction of sterile-fly production facilities, expanding the capacity that eradicated screwworm from the U.S. in the 1960s. Because female flies mate once, sterile-male releases collapse populations — but only if you can produce flies at scale, and that scale did not exist a year ago.

Four, the ports themselves are hardened: disinfectant dip vats, layered inspections and screening protocols that did not apply to the earlier trade. In short, the earlier reopening rested on hope that the fly would stay south; this one rests on surveillance data, response experience and physical infrastructure. Whether that is enough is the bet — what USDA still cannot know is how containment holds through peak fly season, and tonight’s statement should be read for how candidly it addresses that gap.

Market impact: U.S. side

Don’t expect cheaper hamburger by Labor Day. The first loads through Douglas are still 30 days out, and those are feeder calves, not beef — they need months on feed before slaughter. The supply impact arrives in stages: feedyard placements build late this year, fed-cattle supplies improve in 2027, and retail beef prices respond last. The near-term effect is psychological and financial, not physical.

Futures: the immediate pressure point is the feeder cattle market, which has priced in scarcity all year. Restoring a million-head annual pipeline — even gradually — is bearish at the margin for feeder futures and for calf prices in U.S. border states, where imported Mexican calves compete directly with domestic ranchers’ output. Fed cattle and boxed beef should feel less immediate effect. Watch Monday’s open, and note the announcement landed after Friday’s close — a familiar pattern for market-moving USDA news.

Feedyards and packers: Southwestern feedyards running well under capacity get their raw material back, and packers get badly needed throughput. As JBS USA chief Wesley Batista Filho put it at the WSJ Global Food Forum, reopening the border is “the biggest thing that can happen in the short term” for beef supply. Margins in cattle feeding and packing — both under intense pressure — stand to improve before consumers see relief.

U.S. cow-calf producers: the flip side. Record calf prices have been the rancher’s reward for a historically small herd, and renewed Mexican competition trims that premium — one reason R-CALF and some ranch groups oppose reopening beyond the biosecurity argument. It also slightly weakens the incentive to retain heifers, which could slow the U.S. herd rebuild at the margin.

Market impact: Mexico side

For Mexico, this is unambiguous relief. The export ban bottled up hundreds of thousands of calves in Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango and Coahuila — states whose ranching economies are built around the U.S. feeder pipeline. With the export outlet closed, northern Mexican calf prices fell to steep discounts against U.S. values, forage and feed costs mounted, and animals backed up on ranches and in domestic feedyards.

Reopening restores the arbitrage: expect Mexican feeder prices to firm quickly toward export parity, a surge of pent-up supply to move through Douglas once protocols allow, and dollar revenue to flow back to border-state ranchers. Mexico’s domestic packers, which absorbed some of the stranded supply at favorable prices, lose that windfall. The wild card is capacity: one Arizona port handling a backlog that once moved through multiple crossings means the early pace will be throttled by inspection throughput — dip vats and paperwork, not demand, will set the flow rate. Mexico also retains every incentive to keep sterile-fly cooperation on track, since another detection near the border would shut the door again.

The politics and the pushback

The announcement lands squarely in the administration’s inflation fight. The White House has been pressuring grocers on beef prices, the Justice Department has a criminal antitrust probe of the major packers underway, and USDA is funding smaller packing operations. Reopening the border is the only move on that list that adds actual cattle.

But the opposition is loud and well-connected. R-CALF USA — which has gained favor with top administration officials, especially Rollins — wants the border shut until the parasite is fully eradicated. “This is a real threat to U.S. livestock,” says the group’s Bill Bullard. With screwworm now confirmed inside Texas, any new detection traced to imported cattle would be politically explosive — which is why Rollins is stressing that herd protection, not price relief, drove the call.

What to watch

First, tonight’s 8 p.m. ET USDA statement: sources inform it will formalize the decision, and the details matter — the exact protocol requirements, the timetable for the New Mexico ports, whether USDA spells out re-closure triggers, and any case-count thresholds. 

Second, the screwworm case map: containment in Texas is the whole ballgame. 

Third, Monday’s feeder cattle futures. 

Fourth, whether announced timelines hold — the July 2025 reopening didn’t.

Bottom line

This is the most consequential cattle supply decision USDA could make in the short run, and it is a calculated risk: a million-head pipeline reopens against a parasite that is already inside the U.S. Expect modest bearish pressure on feeder cattle and calf prices, meaningful relief for Southwestern feedyards, packers and Mexican ranchers — and little change at the meat case before 2027. The reopening is only as durable as the surveillance data behind it; watch tonight’s 8 p.m. ET statement for the fine print, because the fine print is where this either sticks or unravels.