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TEXARKANA – A 30-year-old registered sex offender is behind bars after evading arrest when a Texarkana mother found her teenager in his car early Monday morning, according to our news partners at KETK.

According to the Texarkana Police Department, a Texarkana mother called police when she found her 13-year-old daughter in a car parked in front of a house with Tyjae Clark, 30 of New Boston, instead of asleep in bed.

The police department said Clark kicked the girl out of the car and sped off when the mother confronted them. The mother was able to provide authorities with a car description and license plate number. Texarkana PD said the Wake Village Police Department found the car and stopped it a short time later.

It was then that Clark got out of the car and ran away from police. After a perimeter was set up in the area an officer spotted him and placed him under arrest, the police department said.

Clark was taken to the Bowie County Jail where he was originally only charged with evading detention until a search of Clark’s phone revealed several inappropriate messages between him and the girl, officials said.

According to police, the girl clearly told Clark, who has a lifetime requirement to register as a sex offender, that she was only 13-years-old.

The police department said based on the information and evidence, arrest warrants for aggravated sexual assault of a child and online solicitation of a minor were served to Clark.

Clark is being held at the Bowie County Jail on a total $410,000 bond.

Democratic Rep. Sylvia Garcia won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Texas on Tuesday. Garcia won her fourth term in the Houston district. One of the first two Latinas to serve in Congress from Texas, the attorney was selected as one of the House impeachment managers in the first attempt to remove Donald Trump from office. She has advocated granting citizenship to migrants who were illegally brought into the United States as children. She serves on the Financial Services Committee and is the whip for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The Associated Press declared Garcia the winner at 11:19 p.m. EST.

Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Texas on Tuesday. De La Cruz, a Latina businesswoman, defended the newly drawn 15th Congressional District that stretches from San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley. She faced a rematch this year against her 2022 opponent, Democrat Michelle Vallejo. The Associated Press declared De La Cruz the winner at 11:45 p.m. EST.

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Texas on Wednesday. Cuellar, a 10-term representative, is the top Democrat on the House appropriations subcommittee in charge of homeland security. Earlier this year, he was indicted on conspiracy and bribery charges over ties to the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. The district spans a wide section of the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, including Cuellar’s hometown of Laredo, and includes a narrow strip that runs to San Antonio’s suburbs. He defeated Republican Jay Furman, a retired Navy commander. The Associated Press declared Cuellar the winner at 1:54 a.m. EST.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz of Texas won reelection Tuesday night as the GOP showed growing strength along the U.S.-Mexico border and continued chipping away at a region that has been a longtime stronghold for Democrats.

De La Cruz centered her campaign on border security to again win over the predominately Latino and working-class district that stretches from San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley. She was on pace to win by an even larger margin than she did in 2022 in what was a rematch with Democratic challenger Michelle Vallejo.

It was one of three closely watched House races on the Texas-Mexico border. Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, on the ballot for the first time since being indicted earlier this year, was reelected to his seat in a close race. Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez’s race remained too early to call early Wednesday.

Republicans have invested heavily into South Texas since several counties made significant shifts toward former President Donald Trump in 2020. Those gains continued this year, including Trump flipping Cameron County, one of the largest counties on the Texas border.

“Tonight we are witnessing incredible results, especially with Hispanics across the state of Texas, and we are seeing tonight generational change in South Texas,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz told supporters after his victory over U.S. Rep. Colin Allred.

“Our Hispanic communities aren’t just leaving the Democratic Party, they are coming home to conservative values they never left,” Cruz said.

Trump was also in reach of potentially flipping Hidalgo County, which President Joe Biden had won by 17 percentage points, along with former Democratic strongholds Starr and Webb counties.
Congressman wins under indictment

Cuellar defeated political newcomer Jay Furman in an early test of the congressman’s political resilience following a May indictment on bribery charges.

Cuellar has deep roots in South Texas, serving the 28th Congressional District for nearly two decades. Republicans spent millions of dollars trying to unseat him in 2022 — the most competitive race of Cuellar’s career — but still lost by double-digits.

This time around, Cuellar’s biggest hurdle was maintaining support in the face of criminal charges. He and his wife were indicted for accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes for accepting money from an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico. Cuellar has said he and his wife are innocent. In 2022, Cuellar had defeated his opponent by 13 percentage points, a much wider victory than his single-digit victory this time over Furman.
De La Cruz wins rematch

De La Cruz was the first Republican to win a congressional race in South Texas. The 15th Congressional District was one of two new seats awarded to Texas following the 2020 census, driven by the state’s booming Hispanic population, and was drawn by Republican mapmakers to give them an edge.

Vallejo’s campaign leaned into protecting Social Security and Medicare, which are popular programs among her primarily Latino and working-class base. De La Cruz has touted her support of tougher border security policies, including those backed by Trump.
Republicans hone in on the Rio Grande Valley

Republicans were also zeroing in on Gonzalez in a rematch with former Rep. Mayra Flores, who Republicans see as a rising star on the southern border.

Of the three border races in Texas, Republicans threw most of their muster behind their campaign to unseat Gonzalez, a moderate Democrat who defeated Flores by more than 8 percentage points in 2022 but was locked in a closer race this time.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson had campaigned for Flores, who was the first Mexican-born woman elected to Congress and has outraised Gonzalez in a race that is one of the GOP’s biggest targets nationally. Flores previously held the seat after winning a special election earlier in 2022, under a map that was more favorable to Republicans.
Shifts in South Texas

Counties along the Texas-Mexico border made significant swings in 2020 toward Trump. The rightward shift represents a changing political landscape along the U.S.-Mexico border where border security has become a key issue for voters.

President Biden won Hidalgo County, a reliably blue district, by less than half the margin that Hillary Clinton did in 2016. In rural Zapata County, Trump flipped the county altogether after Clinton won it by 33 percentage points four years prior.

The gains have led to Republicans to invest millions of dollars into what were once considered deep blue districts.

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona voters have approved letting local police arrest migrants suspected of illegally entering the state from Mexico, an authority that would encroach on the federal government’s power over immigration enforcement but would not take effect immediately, if ever.

With the approval of Proposition 314, Arizona becomes the latest state to test the limits of what local authorities can do to curb illegal immigration. Within the past year, GOP lawmakers in Texas, Iowa and Oklahoma have passed immigration laws. In each case, federal courts have halted the states’ efforts to enforce them.

The only presidential battleground state that borders Mexico, Arizona is no stranger to a bitter divide on the politics of immigration. Since the early 2000s, frustration over federal enforcement of Arizona’s border with Mexico has inspired a movement to draw local police departments, which had traditionally left border duties to the federal government, into immigration enforcement.

The state Legislature approved an immigrant smuggling ban in 2005 that let then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio conduct immigration crackdowns, a 2007 prohibition on employers knowingly hiring people in the country illegally, and a landmark 2010 immigration law that required police, while enforcing other laws, to question the legal status of people suspected of being in the country without authorization.

Arizona voters have been asked to decide matters related to immigration before. They approved a 2004 law denying some government benefits to people in the country illegally and a 2006 law declaring English to be Arizona’s official language. They also rejected a 2008 proposal that would have made business-friendly revisions to the state law barring employers from hiring people who are in the country without authorization.

Arizona GOP lawmakers say the proposal was necessary to help secure the border, as they blamed the Biden administration for an unprecedented surge of illegal immigration. Record levels of illegal crossings have plummeted in recent months, following moves by the White House to tighten asylum restrictions.

Opponents of Proposition 314 argue it would harm Arizona’s economy and reputation, as well as lead to the racial profiling of Latinos. They cite the profiling Latinos endured when Arpaio led the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. In 2013, a federal judge ruled Latinos had been racially profiled in Arpaio’s traffic patrols that targeted immigrants, leading to a court-ordered overhaul of the agency that’s expected to cost taxpayers $314 million in legal and compliance costs by mid-summer 2025.

Kelli Hykes, who works in health policy and volunteers for Greg Whitten, the Democratic nominee in the race for Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, said she thought carefully about how to vote on the immigration measure but declined to share her choice.

“It’s so polarizing, and there are folks in my family that are going to be voting one way and I’m voting another,” Hykes said.

Proposition 314 makes it a state crime for people to illegally enter Arizona from Mexico outside official ports of entry, permitting local and state law enforcement officers to arrest them and state judges to order their deportations. Those who enforce the law would be shielded from civil lawsuits.

These provisions, however, wouldn’t be enforceable immediately. A violator couldn’t be prosecuted until a similar law in Texas or another state has been in effect for 60 consecutive days.

The Arizona GOP lawmakers who voted to put the measure on the ballot were referring to Texas Senate Bill 4. The bill, signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in December, was supposed to allow local and state law enforcement to arrest people accused of entering Texas illegally from Mexico.

A federal appeals court put it on hold in March. The following month, a panel of federal judges heard from a Texas attorney defending the law and Justice Department attorneys arguing it encroached on the federal government’s authority over enforcing immigration law. The panel has yet to release its decision.

Other provisions of Proposition 314 aren’t contingent upon similar laws outside Arizona. The approval of the measure immediately makes selling fentanyl that results in a person’s death a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and a crime for noncitizens to submit false documentation when applying for employment or attempting to receive benefits from local, state and federal programs.

WASHINGTON – Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn of Texas released the following statement on the results of the Presidential election:

“Congratulations to President Trump on his historic victory. Texans have made their voices heard and have had enough of Democrats’ failed policies and absent leadership. Faced with higher costs for just about everything, a wide-open southern border, and a lagging economy that doesn’t work for them, the American people are rightly fed up with a Biden-Harris administration that has only made their lives harder, not easier.

The Senator added, “I’m confident President Trump will hit the ground running to restore the Office of the President to what it should be – one that keeps the American people safe and prosperous. It is critically important that the Senate is prepared to enact his pro-growth agenda from day one. Come January, we must be ready to confirm his nominees, pass a budget, address our debt, extend the Trump tax cuts, and reverse Kamala Harris’ disastrous border security policies. Over the years, President Trump and I have worked closely together, especially while I served as Senate Majority Whip, on some of his biggest achievements like landmark tax reform and the confirmations of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. I am looking forward to continuing to serve our nation working hand in glove with him and my Republican colleagues to kickstart his administration and make America great again by making the Senate work again.”

FORT WORTH (AP) — Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas won reelection Tuesday, defeating U.S. Rep. Colin Allred and Democrats’ latest try at ending decades of GOP dominance in the booming state that was thrust this election year to the center of battles over immigration and abortion.

Cruz, 53, secured a third term following another expensive reelection campaign, six years after only narrowly beating Beto O’Rourke. This time around, Cruz implored Republicans to take his race seriously. He tried recasting himself to Texas voters as a get-things-done legislator, far from his reputation as an unapologetic firebrand with national ambitions.

Walking out to the song “Eye of the Tiger,” Cruz addressed his supporters Tuesday night at his watch party in Houston.

“Tonight is an incredible night, a huge victory here in Texas,” Cruz said.

He thanked his wife and his supporters. Cruz also thanked Allred for a hard-fought campaign and pledged to protect the freedoms and values of all Texans, including those who didn’t support him.

Cruz, who emphasized the importance of law and order on the campaign trail, was flanked on stage by a prominent Democratic supporter — Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, the top prosecutor in Texas’ most populous county.

Allred, a former NFL linebacker who would have been Texas’ first Black senator, carried a moderate banner while mostly keeping both Vice President Kamala Harris and progressive supporters at arm’s length. He touted the endorsements of Republicans — including former Rep. Liz Cheney — and ran as a champion of abortion rights in a state with one of the nation’s strictest bans.

His campaign drew criticism early on from some Democrats who grew restless with Allred’s strategy of not packing his schedule with raucous rallies or investing more in smaller corners of Texas, including cities along Texas’ border with Mexico.

It was the latest failed attempt for Texas Democrats, who haven’t won a statewide race in 30 years, the country’s longest losing streak.

Despite Texas’ reliably red reputation, Democrats had hoped to take advantage of the state’s shifting demographics that include growing Hispanic and Black populations and an influx of residents from other states. Six years ago, Cruz narrowly pulled out a victory over O’Rourke by less than 3 percentage points, a loss that inspired Democrats across Texas.

Four in 10 Texas voters said the economy and jobs is the top issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 110,000 voters nationally, including more than 4,500 voters in Texas. About 2 in 10 Texas voters said immigration is the most pressing issue, and about 1 in 10 named abortion.

Cruz, who ran for president in 2016, originally came to the Senate after a stint as Texas’ solicitor general. He launched a popular podcast called “Verdict” in 2020 that defended then-President Donald Trump during his impeachment.

Allred was a star high school athlete from Dallas who played linebacker at Baylor University in Waco before a career in the NFL and then as a civil rights attorney. He also had experience defeating a Republican incumbent, having won a U.S. House seat in Dallas in 2018 that was held for more than two decades by GOP U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions.