In November 2025, a rumor spread that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had blamed immigrants bringing diseased cattle with them for the rising price of beef.
For example, a post on X shared a video of Bessent speaking to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo discussing the issue. "What a weird take!" the post read (archived):
As of this writing, the post had gained nearly 6 million views. The claim further spread on X as well as on Bluesky, where users included AI-generated images of immigrants pushing cows over the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Bessent did say those words, so the quote is correctly attributed to him. A review of the Fox News YouTube page showed Bartiromo interviewed Bessent on her show "Sunday Morning Futures." The exchange occurred at 5:55 in this video:
Asked to respond to Omaha Steak CEO Nate Rempe's assertion that the cost of ground beef would reach $10 a pound, Bessent said:
Well, Maria, the beef market is a very specialized market. It goes in long cycles and this is the perfect storm, again, something we inherited. And there's also, because of the mass immigration, a disease that had been — we've been rid of in North America made its way up through South America, you know, as these migrants brought some of their cattle with them. So part of the problem is we've had to shut the border to Mexican beef because of this disease called the screwworm. So we're not going to let that get into our supply chain.
Bessent was correct that cattle smuggling from Central America to Mexico,
A study by a team at the
In the context of Central America, the issue of illegal animal movement represents a significant concern and remains a common practice in the region (Maxwell et al., 2017). The informal transportation of livestock frequently evades biosecurity measures, which may result in the proliferation of other transboundary diseases, such as Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) and African Swine Fever (ASF). This emphasizes the urgent need for regional collaboration to regulate animal movements and reinforce surveillance systems.
At the time of this writing, illegal cattle breeding was taking place in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, according to InSight Crime, a think tank and media organization dedicated to investigating organized crime in the Americas. The cattle was then smuggled into Mexico, the report showed. InSight Crime said this activity was causing several problems aside from the spread of screwworm, including deforestation in protected natural reserves as well as money laundering.
Experts had been concerned about screwworm for some time. The Wildlife Conservation Society warned about cattle smuggling as a major factor in the screwworm's return to North America on Nov. 1, 2024, weeks before the first confirmed case in Mexico.
However, contrary to Bessent's assertion, InSight Crime experts pointed to "criminal networks," not migrants fleeing their countries of origin, as being responsible for cattle smuggling.
As a result of screwworm in Mexico, the Department of Agriculture suspended the import of Mexican beef in May in an effort to stem the spread of the disease. Later, it also announced a plan to help Mexico fight screwworm.
However, experts said that the increase in beef prices was a result of tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump on some of the top importing countries to the U.S.: Brazil, Uruguay, Australia and New Zealand. On Nov. 14, 2025, Trump told reporters he had cut tariffs on beef, coffee, tomatoes and other foods.