NOTE: After this article went to press on Wednesday night, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins ordered all ports closed again due a reported northward spread of the screwworm. No update has yet been provided as to why Presidio was not included in the original phased-reopening list, but the Sentinel will update the story as more details become available.
PRESIDIO — Ports of entry along the United States-Mexico border closed to cattle crossing began a phased reopening on Monday as both governments work to contain an outbreak of the New World screwworm, a deadly pest that burrows in wounds on livestock. At press time, Del Rio and Laredo were the only Texas ports included on the list for reopening later this summer — Presidio, which can see hundreds of thousands of cattle crossings per year, was not included.
To make matters worse, local officials say that they haven’t gotten a response to repeated inquiries about the closure from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) or the office of Congressman Tony Gonzales, the Big Bend’s representative in Washington. “We’ve been trying to get peoples’ attention as best we can, but it hasn’t been amounting to a whole lot,” said Presidio Mayor John Ferguson. “It’s like this big cloud hanging over our community.”
Ferguson took to social media to mobilize locals to lend their voice to the effort, encouraging folks to write to Congressman Gonzales and the USDA. “The cattle industry is critical to the local economies of Presidio, Texas and Ojinaga, Chihuahua,” he wrote. “We need results, not excuses!”
The New World screwworm was declared eradicated from the U.S. in 1966, but a recent outbreak in Mexico has come as close to the border as Veracruz — around 700 miles away. Officials on this side of the border made the call to close ports in order to prevent the disease from reemerging in the United States. “We are continuing our posture of increased vigilance and will not rest until we are sure this devastating pest will not harm American ranchers,” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins wrote in a press release.
While American ranchers might be grateful for the added layer of protection, American cattle importers are suffering. Isela Nuñez of Pro Customs Brokers in Presidio said that the situation was getting “desperate” — cattle account for the second-highest volume of goods that cross the bridge in Presidio, just behind watermelon.
Everybody from cowboys to hotel operators to local taco vendors depend on the traffic that brisk cattle business brings. Without it, Nuñez and her competitors in the import-export industry have had to make layoffs — and are starting to worry about the survival of their businesses as a whole. “Our local economy is hurting,” Nuñez said. “Presidio is being forgotten.”
The bridge has been closed to cattle imports a few times in recent memory, each time with big consequences for small town Presidio. COVID put a major damper on economic development, and fear of violence along the border in the mid-2010s required the intervention of former Congressman Pete Gallego to help reopen the port to its full capacity.
Cattle that would have otherwise been routed through Presidio are instead heading for Puerto Palomas, across the border from Santa Theresa, New Mexico. That’s a major logistical disadvantage for some markets in Texas, for whom crossing through Presidio saves time and money. Nuñez said she’s not sure what to say to calm investors interested in the up-and-coming port. “We still don’t have a real answer as to why Presidio’s not opening,” she said.
Despite all the frustration, help may be on the way: on Tuesday, Chihuahua Governor Maru Campos Galván posted on Facebook that she had met with Tony Gonzales and encouraged him to include Presidio-Ojinaga in the list of approved ports. “We’ll continue working hand in hand to strengthen our binational collaboration and boost Chihuahua’s whole economy,” she wrote in a press release.