Over the last three years, illegal immigration has totaled nearly six million people in the USA. Despite the Biden Administration claiming on multiple occasions that the border is secure, the situation is not, in fact, secure. This week the situation escalated when Gov. Abbott issued a statement this week that read in part:
I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border
This is an interesting constitutional question that arises. Our form of government is based on social contract. Social contract arguments typically are that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority in exchange for the protection of their remaining rights or maintenance of the social order. In the United States the Social Contract is based on the government protecting the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. But what happens when government no longer protects these natural rights? This is certainly the argument put forth by Gov. Abbot. He is accusing the Federal Government of failing to protect it’s own citizen. Thomas Jefferson addressed this very situation in the declaration of independence when he said:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Further he explains
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security
Therefore, we find ourselves in a situation in which the federal government refuses to enforce it’s laws for the safety of the people and violated the social contract. In fact, this was the first grievance the colonist had with the crown that King that the king “…refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
If the Federal Government refuses to protect the common good and break the social contract what recourse does Gov. Abbott have? Government exist for the sole reason to protect natural rights when they refuse to do that they have broken the social contract.