Republicans are rushing to blame former President Joe Biden for the return of a brutal flesh-eating parasite called New World screwworm, despite having killed the screwworm monitoring program in March 2025.
Appearing on CNBC Monday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins zeroed in on a familiar, and imaginary, foe: immigrants. The screwworm, claimed Rollins, has returned decades after it was eradicated because Biden had an “open borders policy.”
Biden did not have an open borders policy.
“Under the last administration with the massive movement under the open borders policy, the cartels, etc., border security, that’s when [screwworm] began to make its way back up toward America, hitting Mexico in early 2023, moving its way up through Mexico in 2024,” Rollins said.
“And when we walked in the door last year — I was sworn in on Feb. 13 of 2025 — they laid this all out for me and I said, well, where are the sterile flies, right? I mean, we’ve beaten it before, we’ve got to beat it again, and obviously not much had been done to, uh, push back.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, echoed Rollins’ talking points in an interview with Newsmax.
“This is another thing we can thank Joe Biden for,” Marshall claimed. “Millions of people came out of Central America. They brought this screwworm with them, it was on their pets and maybe on their flesh as well.”
Screwworm infestations primarily affect livestock.
The screwworm monitoring program was abruptly terminated in March 2025, after Rollins took over. So, too, were 5,300 other grants and programs killed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, when the Elon Musk-led bureau gutted the United States Agency for International Development.
At the time, Musk called USAID a “crazy waste of money” and “a radical-left political psy op.”
Peyton Schuman, senior director of government relations for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, told KXAN Austin a screwworm outbreak could cost Texas $1.8 billion a year, with cattle producers bearing the brunt of more than $700 million in annual losses.