Queen Creek, Arizona — The U.S. Department of Agriculture said July 24 that it will restart cattle imports through the Douglas port of entry on the Arizona-Sonora border beginning August 24, the first step in a gradual restoration of cross-border livestock trade that has been halted for roughly a year because of the New World screwworm outbreak in Mexico.
Under the plan, Douglas opens first, while the agency prepares two New Mexico crossings, Santa Teresa and Columbus, for possible later openings covering cattle, bison and horses. The department said each animal arriving through the ports will be examined by federal inspectors to confirm it shows no sign of the parasitic fly, whose larvae infest the wounds of living animals.
The agency said the timetable depends on Mexico continuing to meet the milestones of a joint eradication plan, and that openings can be paused if audits or new information point to rising risk in the Mexican border states. The department described Sonora and Chihuahua as the two Mexican states with the lowest screwworm risk, citing their long-running animal-health inspection systems and their distance from southern Mexico, where infestations are concentrated. The nearest active case to the Douglas crossing, detected July 22, was about 325 miles away, according to the announcement.
> "The closure of the Southern ports of entry for the last year has been a tough but necessary action to control the spread of NWS in Mexico and protect the American livestock industry." — U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins
An earlier attempt at reopening Douglas in July 2025 was cut short after a new screwworm case was reported north of the sterile-fly dispersal zone, and the border has remained closed to livestock since. The resumption of imports matters to Arizona's ranching economy and to feedlots and processors across the Southwest that rely on Mexican cattle.
