Democratic Rep. Al Green forced the House into a new impeachment fight on Monday, using a privileged resolution to try to bring an article against President Donald Trump to the floor this week. The move sets up a procedural test for House GOP leaders, who must decide within two legislative days whether to schedule a vote, table the motion or send it to committee.
Green said Trump had gone beyond normal executive power and was pushing the United States toward authoritarian rule. In his resolution, he accused the president of high crimes and misdemeanors after what he said was the use of immigration officers in Operation Metro Surge, including what he called unjustified killings, anonymity for agents, and attacks on the First Amendment and free speech.
“The President is reducing American democracy to an authoritarian regime,” Green said. He also said Trump had transformed ICE and CBP into dangerous, unaccountable paramilitary police forces that operated without oversight and threatened the constitutional order of the United States. In a separate statement, Green said Trump was “brazenly and wantonly” devolving the democratic republic into an authoritarian regime.
The resolution cites four crimes Green believes Trump committed after activating Border Patrol agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers during Operation Metro Surge. It names the deaths of four U.S. citizens killed by immigration officers, including Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who were killed in separate incidents in Minneapolis after altercations with officers. Those killings drew an outcry from congressional Democrats and helped fuel a 76-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year before Congress reopened the department without funding ICE or Border Patrol.
That does not mean the House will automatically reach a vote. Under the privileged process, leaders can still try to table the motion or refer it to a committee of jurisdiction, which could stop the effort before the chamber ever votes on the substance of impeachment. If GOP leaders let it move forward, Democrats would at least force a recorded confrontation over Trump’s immigration crackdown, even though the math still favors Republicans killing it procedurally.
The new push also lands in a broader political pattern that has followed Trump for years. He was impeached twice during his first term and acquitted by the Senate both times, making him the only president impeached twice. Green has now brought impeachment articles against Trump at least three other times since Trump was reelected, and all of those efforts failed. Green also lost his primary election earlier this summer and will not be in Congress next year, narrowing the window for him to keep pressing the case himself. The immediate question is whether House GOP leaders will let the chamber vote or use procedure to bury the resolution before it gets there.
