Congressman seeks to impeach Trump for ICE killings, assaults, and cover-up

Rep. Al Green, a Texas Democrat, filed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Monday, accusing him of high crimes and misdemeanors for transforming federal immigration agencies into what the resolution calls “unaccountable paramilitary police forces.”

The resolution, H.Res. 1486, alleges that Trump has abused his power by directing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to operate “with anonymity and secrecy, assaulting people, committing and covering up unjustified killings of civilians.”

The filing marks the fourth time during his second term that Green has introduced such articles to impeach Trump for various reasons.

The 27-page resolution specifically cites the deaths of U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti, as well as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who were killed in encounters with federal agents during immigration enforcement operations this year.

It also argues that the administration has used the agencies to suppress First Amendment rights, violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches, and defy due process guarantees under the Fifth and 14th Amendments.

Green, 78, who has served more than two decades in the House but lost his May primary after he became a target of the cryptocurrency industry, argues in the resolution that the president’s actions “threaten the very fabric and survival of the United States Constitution and our democratic republic.”

In a formal communiqué to the president accompanying the filing, Green notified Trump of the resolution, stating that it was submitted “to the appropriate bodies for their consideration.”

The resolution draws on constitutional arguments that impeachment is a remedy for political offenses against the state, not solely statutory crimes. It cites a litany of alleged abuses, including the administration’s refusal to cooperate with state and local investigations into the shootings, efforts to withhold evidence, and public statements by the president that the resolution characterizes as a cover-up.

Green’s move was welcomed by Free Speech for People, a legal advocacy group that has been campaigning for a third impeachment of Trump.

The group’s chairman, Ben Clements, said, “The framers anticipated this kind of abuse of executive power. They gave Congress the remedy: impeachment.” John Bonifaz, the group’s president, called the moment “existential for our nation and our democracy.”

“The President of the United States has no authority to wield armed federal agents to intimidate communities, suppress constitutional rights, or consolidate political power on American soil,” said Clements.

In January, during Trump’s anti-immigrant operation in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, ICE and CBP agents killed Good and Pretti, both U.S. citizens. Yet by June, the Republican-controlled Congress passed, and the president signed, a $70 billion funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security agencies. Congress approved $3.6 billion in appropriations for ICE in 2005, the first year a budget for the agency was enacted.

About a month later, an ICE agent shot and killed Salgado Araujo, a Mexican man, in Houston, Texas. Less than a week after that, another agent fatally shot Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, from Colombia, in Biddeford, Maine.

These deaths, both on U.S. streets and in immigrant detention centers, have sparked public outrage and calls from some elected Democrats for reform—or even the abolition of ICE—an agency with a turbulent history created following the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Previous impeachment efforts against Trump during his second term have failed to advance, with a June resolution garnering only 79 votes in the House.

The president was impeached twice during his first term — in December 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and again in January 2021 for incitement of insurrection following the Jan. 6 Capitol attack — but was acquitted by the Senate both times.

Green’s latest resolution, while facing long odds in the Republican-controlled House, sets the stage for what could become a renewed political debate over executive authority and federal law enforcement tactics as the November midterm elections approach.