SANTA TERESA, N.M. – The day before the government allowed Mexican cows and steers to resume crossing into the Santa Teresa-Jerónimo livestock facility – the largest cattle trading hub on the U.S.-Mexico border – Daniel Manzanares was walking the U.S. side of the operation.
Surveying the final touches to the steel and wood gates that corral the livestock through the border wall, he was in high spirits. Thousands of head of cattle would soon be clamoring their way into the U.S. beef and cattle market.
“We’ve been waiting on this for quite a while – a year and a half,” said Manzanares, who has managed the Santa Teresa International Import-Export Livestock Facility since 2020.
Adjoining the Santa Teresa operation is the Puerto Fronterizo Jerónimo, the Mexican component of the facility.
The United States in May 2025 closed all cattle crossings along the southern border, including the 55-acre Santa Teresa facility. The decision came after the discovery in Mexico in November 2024 of New World screwworms – fly larvae that can decimate cattle herds by eating their tissue.
Since the closure was announced, Manzanares has been critical of the decision to shut down the border’s cattle trade. Farmers and ranchers, he said, had already learned through the decades how to prevent the parasite from spreading.
“I don’t know why it was ever shut in the first place,” he said. “We had screwworm here in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, and the border was never shut. It’s a treatable issue. You discover it, you treat it and you go on.”
When the Santa Teresa facility closed, the economic impact was swift. The facility lost about $3 million in revenue, while the Puerto Fronterizo Jerónimo facility across the border has lost about $4 million, Manzanares said.
Before the closure, the Santa Teresa operation processed 3,200 head of cattle each day. More than $1 billion was generated in 2024 from half a million cattle, making the site the largest international import-export livestock facility in North America.
New Mexico officials warned of the closure’s economic ramifications for the region and nation.
Jeff Witte, director of the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, told KRWG public media in 2025 the closure would cause “an economic impact not only in New Mexico but across the United States.”
The full economic impact of the 16-month shutdown is still being tallied, and Manzanares remains skeptical of the official reasons for closing the border cattle trade.
“It was supposedly closed to protect the American consumer and the American livestock industry,” he said. “But that’s just political because it really didn’t do any of that.”
Preparing for the return of cattle
On Wednesday, buoyed by the recent announcement that his port would reopen, Manzanares spent the final hours of the day preparing for the long-awaited arrival of Mexican cattle.
As he stood on an elevated steel catwalk surrounded by empty corrals, he looked down, envisioning the coming flow of livestock.
“We’ll have the gates to funnel the cattle into the scale right here,” he said, pointing to a massive herd scale with a maximum capacity of 40,000 pounds and long enough to fit about 60 large cows and steers.
He explained how the cattle would be scanned and sorted using artificial intelligence software, then moved to holding pens, corrals and trucks before being “transported overnight to the different grow yards where the buyers have their clients.”
“It’s kind of hairy being down to the wire, but we’re getting there,” he said. “We’ll be ready.”
Thursday morning dozens of local and state officials converged on the Santa Teresa facility for its reopening. From the catwalk, the crowd peered across a few hundred feet to a similar gathering of officials and media in Mexico.
Originally scheduled for a 9 a.m. release of about 600 cattle from Mexico, the timeline was delayed several hours after the discovery of about 200 steers with fresh castrations – a violation of protocols prohibiting open wounds that could attract flies and their screwworm larvae.
With those steers separated and isolated in Mexico, the remaining 400 cattle, snorting and bellowing, were herded toward the gate, pushed along by the shouts, stomping and whistles of Mexican ranch hands.
Just before 11 a.m., the first steers and cows crossed through the border wall, and whoops and applause erupted on both sides of the border.
“We are reopening this port for the movement of cattle from Mexico and the United States,” said Dudley Hoskins, the USDA under secretary for marketing and regulatory programs, who attended the port’s reopening. “It’s an exciting day here in Santa Teresa.”
Back in business
With the Santa Teresa-Jeronimo binational operation now reopened, the regular process has resumed.
Cattle from northwestern Mexico will again be inspected for disease and infections at the Jeronimo facility, then herded through the gates to the Santa Teresa facility. From there, the cattle will be sent to feedlots throughout New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, California and the Midwest, contributing to the $127 billion in income generated nationally, according to 2025 cattle sales figures.
The Santa Teresa site handles a quarter of all cattle imported from Mexico and Canada, as well as 60% of all livestock coming through the U.S.-Mexico border.
Union Ganadera Regional de Chihuahua – a cooperative of livestock producers throughout Chihuahua – manages and operates both sides of the Santa Teresa and Jeronimo facilities. This union also operates the Mexican facilities at the Columbus-Palomas cattle crossing, which is also reopening.
The USDA last month opened the Douglas, Arizona, international port to cattle, beginning the phased reopening of livestock trade on the border.
“The closure of the southern ports of entry for the last year has been a tough but necessary action to control the spread of (New World screwworm) in Mexico and protect the American livestock industry,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in a previously released statement.
Price of beef
Despite its large role in importing Mexican cattle, the reopening of the Santa Teresa cattle crossing might not have much national impact on high beef prices, said one border expert.
“It’s not going to have a big effect,” said Gerardo Fierro, executive director of the New Mexico Border Authority, which represents New Mexico in cross-border trade and the development of the state’s international ports of entry.
He said imported Mexican cattle represent about 3% of the meat consumed in the U.S. The primary benefit of Santa Teresa’s cattle trade, he said, is as a regional economic engine.
“Even though it does not represent a big number for the United States, for Texas and New Mexico, it represents a big number,” Fierro said.
Reopening Santa Teresa’s port was “something we were all waiting for at the border,” he said, adding, “this means jobs for New Mexico and Texas.”
Hoskins cautioned that the reopening of some border ports does not mean the screwworm threat is over.
“We will need continued vigilance, education and outreach. We need the general public to be aware of it,” he said. “It’s not just cattle, it can be companion animals; it could be cats and dogs, you name it.”
Hoskins said another shutdown is possible “if we have a major infestation in this area” or if there are lapses in cattle treatment and inspections by the local ranching industry.
Screwworm prevention
Additional safety measures have been incorporated into the import process, including more inoculations a few days before cattle cross the border, multiple visual inspections and specially trained dogs that alert handlers if they detect the screwworm parasite.
The first U.S. case of screwworm in this latest surge was found June 3 on cattle in Texas’ Zavala County. Since then, 50 cases have spread to 18 counties in Texas and two in New Mexico. Neither El Paso or Doña Ana counties have reported any screwworm infections. The last case registered on the