I would agree that it's a longhorn beetle, but don't think it's the Asian or the Citrus variety. There are however 1200 species of longhorn that live in North America so it could be a tough time to identify the right markings.
I find beetles fascinating. Such an array of complexity. I could look at them all day. My wife hates them though!
Here is the BugGuide link for the specific beetle that yakatme is asking about. Clearly the one in the photograph your brother took is a female beetle :-)
Wikipedia reckons that there are more known species of beetle than any other order and beetles equate to 25% of all known life forms, 40% of all insects, and somewhere over 1 million different species of beetle. Like I said, fascinating :-)
