McAllen, Texas (Border Report) — A Texas man was arrested Thursday at the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge on an outstanding felony warrant for a dog attack involving death, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said.

The 33-year-old man arrived from Mexico at the bridge when an officer matched him with an outstanding warrant from Aransas County, Texas. He is wanted in connection with the death of a man in Rockport, Texas, who died after being attacked by dogs.

The man is charged with attack by dog involving death, which is a second-degree felony in Texas.

He is in the Hidalgo County Jail and is expected to be extradited to Aransas County.

“CBP screens all travelers entering the United States and we are committed to bringing in those individuals to face criminal charges,” said Port Director Carlos Rodriguez of the port of Hidalgo/Pharr/Anzalduas.

Texas and Louisiana do not have authority to challenge the Biden administration’s guidelines for when to deport migrants from the country, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a knock to the two states most active in challenging President Biden’s immigration policies. 

In an 8-1 decision, the court determined the two states lacked the standing to sue over one of the Department of Homeland Security’s earliest directives.

“The States essentially want the Federal Judiciary to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policy so as to make more arrests,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.

“But this Court has long held ‘that a citizen lacks standing to contest the policies of the prosecuting authority when he himself is neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution.’”

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the federal crime of encouraging illegal immigration as constitutional in a ruling that clarifies the crime’s scope.

In a 7-2 vote, the justices sided with the Justice Department in reversing a lower court’s decision that found the crime unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds for sweeping too far into protected speech.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett clarified the law only permits the government to prosecute actual facilitation of illegal immigration, not benign statements, so it did not pose free speech concerns.

“Properly interpreted, this provision forbids only the intentional solicitation or facilitation of certain unlawful acts,” Barrett wrote.

Barrett’s opinion was joined by all of her fellow conservative justices and liberal justice Elena Kagan. Liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

The dispute involved the case of Helaman Hansen, who was convicted over a scheme of falsely promising at least 471 noncitizens a path to citizenship through adult adoption, receiving $1.8 million.

On appeal, Hansen successfully tossed his two counts of encouraging illegal immigration for private financial gain by challenging the crime as being unconstitutionally overly broad by sweeping too far into protected speech.

In most contexts, defendants must challenge how the law is applied to them specifically. But in free speech cases, such as Hansen’s, defendants have the ability to challenge laws on their face, even if their own speech at issue was unprotected, out of concern that others’ speech may still be unconstitutionally chilled.

“It is neither our job nor our prerogative to retrofit federal statutes in a manner patently inconsistent with Congress’s choices,” Jackson wrote in her dissent, which was joined by Sotomayor.

“Moreover, by acquiescing to the Government’s newly minted pitch to narrow this statute in order to save it, the majority undermines the goal of the overbreadth doctrine, which aims to keep overly broad statutes off the books in order to avoid chilling constitutionally protected speech,” Jackson added.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who voted with the majority, also wrote separately to stress his opposition to the doctrine, as he has done previously.

“This case demonstrates just how far courts have drifted from their original station of adjudicating the rights of the parties before them in accordance with law,” Thomas wrote. “In an appropriate case, we should carefully reconsider the facial overbreadth doctrine.”

They high court sent Hansen’s specific criminal case back to a lower court for further proceedings. Hansen was also convicted on 15 fraud charges that weren’t in question.

The case marks the second time that the court weighed the constitutionality of the crime of encouraging illegal immigration. Three years ago, the court disposed of a near-identical challenge on other grounds that left the First Amendment question untouched.

BROOKS COUNTY, Texas (Border Report) — Prolonged extreme heat in deep South Texas this month has killed at least one migrant and is even prompting coyotes to adjust how they smuggle migrants through, Border Report has learned.

The Rio Grande Valley on Wednesday had its ninth consecutive day under an “extreme heat” warning, which has led to several record-high temperatures.

In rural Brooks County, temperatures hit 106 degrees with a heat index of 115, according to the National Weather Service.

“The heat wave has been extremely unbearable,” Brooks County Sheriff Urbino “Benny” Martinez told Border Report on Wednesday. “We picked up what I refer to as a full body just yesterday, which is the first one.”

That means the body was intact with all its limbs, he explained. Most times they find migrant remains they aren’t whole, he said.

The body found Tuesday was the 22nd set of migrant remains found in this rural ranching county about 70 miles north of the Mexican border.

Brooks County has been the deadliest for migrant remains in all of the Southwest because migrants must find a way to get around a heavily staffed Border Patrol checkpoint in Falfurrias, in order to get to points north like San Antonio or Houston.

In 2021, Brooks County set a record with 119 migrant deaths.

Most migrants die from dehydration and exposure to the harsh elements here. Some are hurt, and others are lost or left behind by smugglers, Martinez says.

But the recent extreme heat has even affected smuggling routes and tactics, Martinez says. Instead of making them trudge through this county’s thick brush, more undocumented migrants are being driven through, and that has resulted in more high-speed chases and bailouts, and lots of property damage to ranchers, he said.

“The issue we’re having now is they’re driving the group through in vehicles without having them walk anymore,” Martinez said. “They’re driving them through and we got more fence damage now.”

“They’re cutting the fences and cutting the locks,” in order to short-cut north around the checkpoint, Martinez says. “They’re doing both and they’re filtering through so it’s difficult.”

Dr. Mike Vickers, a veterinarian, says he has incurred over $40,000 in damage from human smugglers charging through the fences of his three South Texas ranches this year.

He says he and others have taken matters into their own hands.

Vickers, 73, is chairman of the Texas Border Volunteers, a nonprofit group with 300 members who come from South Texas and several other states to help patrol these rural parts and notify Border Patrol and law enforcement when they see what they call illegal activity.

“It’s become quite a problem here,” said Vickers, who on Aug. 3 will celebrate his 50th year practicing veterinary medicine. “Probably over half of my clients have been forced to leave their ranch because of the smuggling; they feel threatened, the eminent threat of danger and they’ve moved to McAllen or Corpus Christi, San Antonio or even farther north.”

He says he feels like the federal government doesn’t care that people in Brooks County don’t feel safe in their own homes, or that property values have dropped because of the dangers of living here.

“Because of the smuggling through their ranches, they can’t even sell it,” he said.

Vickers met with Border Report on Wednesday near his ranch at his clinic, the Las Palmas Veterinary Hospital, located about 4 miles north of the checkpoint on Highway 281.

A couple of weeks ago, he says, he found a teenager on his ranch. The boy said he had been left by smugglers — called coyotes — and said he hadn’t eaten in days.

“All this smuggling and open-border stuff and all this criminal element coming through private property is having a huge negative impact on ranchers and farmers who live in the rural areas,” Vickers said.

“And despite the heat they’re still coming,” he said. “They’re still paying criminal organizations to bring them in here. The guys bringing them in are gang members. We’ve got pistoleros, Mexican mafia, we’ve got MS-13. All these different groups align with the Gulf Cartel or the Zetas or some of these other newer cartel groups that have shown up and they bring these people through and they bring the drugs through.”

The National Weather Service predicts temperatures in Brooks County will remain above 106 degrees through June 28.

LAREDO, Tex. (KGNS) -Good morning the heat continues across South Texas with excessive heat warnings and heat advisorys this afternoon and tonight.

A sunny , hot and humid day a high near 109 with south easterly winds up to 13 mph.

An excessive heat warning will be in effect for Webb county from 12pm - 9pm with heat index values of 115 or higher.

Warm and humid night a low of 79 with breezy to windy gust up to 25 mph.

Weekend into next week hot and dry , dew points expected to drop around the 50s with breezy to windy conditions, brining up the concern for fire weather .

Medium to high chance of dangerous heat continuing through next week.

Have a great weekend and stay cool.