Houston Congressman Al Green has again put the Constitution where he believes it belongs – squarely in the middle of America’s political conversation. On Monday, August 24, Green filed H.Res. 1486, articles of impeachment accusing President Donald J. Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors tied to the administration’s immigration-enforcement practices and what Green describes as a broader assault on constitutional restraints. Green’s office says the resolution alleges that Trump allowed ICE and Customs and Border Protection to operate without adequate accountability while assaulting civilians and covering up unjustified killings, naming Renée Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero.

Green followed the filing with a direct communiqué to Trump — not a victory lap, but a constitutional warning shot. He told the president that the issue, in his view, is not Democrat versus Republican, conservative versus liberal, or Left versus Right, but “right versus wrong.” That framing matters. The Constitution was never designed as a party souvenir to be pulled from the shelf only when convenient. It is the operating agreement for a republic, and Green is arguing that no president gets an unlimited data plan for executive power.

The resolution goes further, accusing Trump of abusing presidential authority by turning ICE and CBP into “unaccountable paramilitary police forces” while threatening due process, free speech, judicial independence and the separation of powers. Those are Green’s allegations, not adjudicated findings. The White House and Department of Homeland Security rejected them Tuesday, August 25, defended federal immigration officers and called the impeachment effort baseless. That rebuttal belongs in the record, too, because democracy works best when charges are public, responses are public and evidence is tested rather than buried beneath partisan shouting.

Politically, Green is climbing a steep hill. Republicans currently control both chambers, and filing articles does not itself impeach a president. Under the Constitution, the House must approve articles by a simple majority; conviction in the Senate requires two-thirds of senators present. H.Res. 1486, therefore, is not a removal notice. It is a constitutional accusation placed into the national record.

That distinction is precisely why Green’s action may matter even if it never reaches a Senate trial. He acknowledged the arithmetic in his letter, arguing that unsuccessful articles can still register formal disapproval and demonstrate that some members of Congress are “watching and willing to act.” Former Vice President Dick Cheney — hardly a liberal icon — warned in 2022 that Trump represented an extraordinary threat to the republic, a reminder that concern over democratic guardrails has crossed ideological lines.

Green, who has represented Houston in Congress since 2005 and lost his Democratic primary runoff to Christian Menefee in May, is making this stand as his current House tenure nears its end. That gives the moment an added layer: a longtime Houston congressman choosing confrontation over quiet departure.

For Houston Style Magazine readers, the issue is larger than one politician. Democracy determines whether neighborhoods are heard, courts remain independent, immigrant families receive due process and federal power answers to law. Green’s critics will call the filing political theater. His supporters will call it constitutional courage. Both can debate the tactic.

But the larger democratic principle should be harder to dispute: presidents are powerful, not sovereign. Congress is not decorative. Courts are not optional. Free speech is not a favor. Due process is not a loophole.

 

America’s democratic experiment has survived wars, assassinations, scandal, segregation and constitutional crises because citizens and institutions kept insisting that the rules still mattered. Al Green’s latest filing is one more test of that insistence. The outcome is uncertain; the responsibility is not.

Democracy does not protect itself. People do.

More Congressman Al Green Information, go to: https://algreen.house.gov/