Mexico’s President, Claudia Sheinbaum, criticized the U.S. government after the American Secretary of Agriculture announced the closure of the border to cattle from Mexico. The secretary ordered the closure due to the ongoing spread of the deadly New World Screwworm, a plague that can be fatal to humans.
“From our viewpoint, she took a totally exaggerated decision to shut down the border again,” Sheinbaum said during her morning news conference.
Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that, due to a new case of screwworm infection discovered just 350 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, she had ordered all livestock crossings from Mexico to be halted.
The move was done to “quarantine and target this deadly pest in Mexico,” Rollins said in a prepared statement. “We must see additional progress combating NWS (New World Screwworm) in Veracruz and other nearby Mexican states in order to reopen livestock ports along the Southern border.”
In their notice of the border closure, Rollins claimed that the USDA was holding Mexico accountable by ensuring that proactive measures were being taken to stop the spread of the screwworm.
The U.S. government had first halted livestock imports in May 2025 but was in the process of reopening trade when it discovered the new case, 160 miles north of an area that was meant to be a buffer zone, where health officials were releasing sterile flies aimed at stopping the spread. The plague is spread through flies and can be deadly to humans.
In her conference, Sheinbaum claimed that officials in Mexico were doing everything “scientifically possible” to stop the spread.
Historically, with the help of the U.S. government, Mexico had managed to eradicate screwworm in the 1990s, with the last outbreak occurring in 1993. However, due to widespread corruption by Mexican officials who allowed cattle from contaminated areas to be smuggled through Mexico’s southern border, U.S. authorities sounded the alarm in November 2024 and began urging Mexico to take steps to stop it.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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