Agriculture Secretary Announces Update as Flesh-Eating Screwworm Comes Within 70 Miles of US Border

Mexico has failed to ‘regularly maintain fly traps as agreed,’ thereby negatively affecting detection efforts, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said.

Cattle are held in a corral before being exported to the United States through the Jeronimo-Santa Teresa border crossing after U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced an agreement with Mexico on the management of the New World screwworm at the Chihuahua Regional Livestock Union facility, outside Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on April 29, 2025. Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

More than 8,000 traps have been deployed across Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, targeting the New World screwworm (NWS) flies, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a Sept. 26 post on X, noting that no additional NWS infections have been detected since Sept. 21.

On Sept. 21, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that Mexico’s National Service of Agro-Alimentary Health, Safety, and Quality had confirmed a new NWS infection in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo León, Mexico, less than 70 miles from the U.S. border. The infected animal was an 8-month-old cow.