AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We’re joined now in our New York studio by a reporter who’s just back from covering the vote to incorporate Elon Musk’s new company town in South Texas called Starbase, home to Musk’s airspace and defense company SpaceX. The vote was 212 to 6. The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland caught up with one of the few people who voted “no.”

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: You just cast your ballot?

“NO” VOTER: Yeah.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Do you mind me asking how you voted?

“NO” VOTER: Voted “no.”

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Voted “no”?

“NO” VOTER: I was here before SpaceX. I have no loyalty issues there.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Yeah.

“NO” VOTER: So, no.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: How are you feeling about the whole vote?

“NO” VOTER: Not happy.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Why? Tell me about it. I’m with The Guardian, by the way.

“NO” VOTER: Are you from the local area?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: No, I live in New Orleans.

“NO” VOTER: This used to be a nice, quiet, peaceful, little kind of retirement community. It’s not anymore.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: How do you feel about going to Mars?

“NO” VOTER: Hmm?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: How do you feel about going to Mars?

“NO” VOTER: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Oliver Laughland also went to a protest on the beach near Starbase, Texas, and spoke to Christopher Basaldú with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network.

CHRISTOPHER BASALDÚ: Apartheid police state, where he can make his own little city that he can be the king of, and everybody that works for him can be his pawn. And the really bad thing about company towns is, when you get fired, you lose everything. And he will use his police force to drag those people out of their own houses, throw them out on the street and, you know, what? Deport them to Brownsville? … If SpaceX becomes its own city, they will impanel their own police force. That police force will work hand in hand with ICE. They will put up surveillance. They will check all of our license plates. They will work with La Migra at the checkpoint. And they will make our lives hell. And they will try to make sure that nobody ever accesses this beach again.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we are joined by Oliver Laughland, The Guardian's U.S. southern bureau chief, who was in Starbase for his “Anywhere but Washington” series. He's based in New Orleans, but joins us today in New York.

Welcome to Democracy Now! So, if you can describe this town of 1.6 square miles that has been newly incorporated? We’re talking about 20 miles from Brownsville in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, just across the border from Mexico and on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, what President Trump has demanded the federal government call and tries to demand that journalists call the Gulf of America.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Yeah. So, it’s a remote community, as you say. It’s about 20 miles outside of Brownsville. It’s quite hard to get there. The roads are beaten up. There’s a lot of traffic, because there’s a lot of industry going in and out of the town. The area in which people live is a place called Boca Chica Village, which, as one of our interviewees said, used to be kind of a quaint retirement village, which has now been overtaken almost entirely by SpaceX employees. There are about three or four households that have held out. And we believe that that voter was one of the people that held out and one of the only six people who voted against the incorporation of the city.

But it’s quite a surreal place, actually. It’s very remote, as I say. It’s in an area of really outstanding natural beauty. The beach is absolutely stunning. There are migratory birds. Turtles come to lay their eggs on that beach. But right by it, you have these two giant launch pads and these huge rockets that are kind of, you know, wheeling their way across the town, being tested in distant locations. Yeah, it’s an interesting place.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about those who voted. Talk about who they were, the electorate, and who also, amazingly, elected the mayor of the town, Bobby Peden, a SpaceX vice president.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: That’s right. So, they voted for three positions: the mayor and two commissioners, all of whom are SpaceX employees. The vast majority of the electorate, we understand to be SpaceX employees. There’s about 270-odd eligible voters, only a handful of which are not employees of the company itself. So it was effectively a company town voting for its own corporation.

AMY GOODMAN: And what exactly does this mean?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: So, we’ve been trying to ask SpaceX exactly what they’re trying to do with this new incorporation. It’s limited power, to some extent, so it will allow them to, you know, impose certain property taxes, change building codes, as well. So a lot of residents are very fearful that that’s just going to, you know, essentially greenlight further expansion. There is, as one of those interviewees was saying, possibility that Starbase could create its own fire department and police force, as well. So, you know, on the one hand, it’s limited power, but on the other hand, I think it’s symbolic of something else that’s going on in the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Which is?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Which is, I guess, you know, the increased power of a minority of billionaires taking over elements of government.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is absolutely amazing. You have the Federal Aviation Administration granting SpaceX permission to increase its launches of massive rockets and boosters from Starbase from five to 25 per year — the FAA, which is under huge fire right now for the catastrophes we’re seeing around the country at airports. Now, the former head of the FAA was driven out by Elon Musk himself, the richest man the world. I think they were going to impose a fine of something like $600,000 on SpaceX and also launch an investigation into the rockets exploding over the Caribbean. He’s out, and it’s not clear what’s going on now. And then you see the FAA allowing this increase in launches. It’s sort of a plan that’s being played out before our eyes.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: That’s certainly how opponents of the expansion of Starbase in Brownsville and Cameron County would describe it. It’s obviously, you know, an area that’s riddled with conflicts of interest. I would say Starbase have been trying to expand their launch schedule for a while now. But, yeah, it’s very interesting, the timing, quite literally within 48 hours or so of this vote going through, them being approved to, effectively, you know, multiply their launches by five times, so it’s potentially two a month now.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the environmental impact concerns that people are raising, that the protesters are talking about, and going back to — well, it might go back well before this, but in 2023, the first integrated Starship vehicle launched from Starbase exploded in mid-flight, spewing debris over the local habitat and people?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Yeah. So, this is, as I say, kind of an outstanding area of natural beauty. There are migratory birds that come and nest in this beach area, turtles that also nurse there. So, you know, the environmental advocates that I spoke to were talking about, you know, fears of habitat destruction, you know, debris. Starbase was fined last year by the EPA over wastewater disposal.

But it’s not just about environmental concerns, although I think they are very central to what a lot of people disagree with. It’s about access to public land. So, every time one of these launches happen, every time, you know, even the launch is scheduled to happen — sometimes they don’t happen, and they get called off at last minute — those roads close down. And it’s a public beach. And for a lot of people who, you know, live in the county —

AMY GOODMAN: Boca Chica State Park?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Yes, yeah, and the beach area itself. You know, people go there to fish, and have done so for generations. They go there to relax. It’s a very beautiful place, as I said. And they can’t get there anymore. So I think it’s a combination of, you know, very clear environmental concerns, but also, you know, really a stake in what is still public land. When I was talking to some of those protesters on the day of the vote, they said even turning up to the beach now feels like an act of resistance, which struck me.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if we could talk from the environmental concerns to the concerns about, I mean, Elon Musk, a huge Trump supporter and benefiting enormously from the Trump presidency and in charge of DOGE — at least he was. It’s not clear what’s going on right now. If you can talk about the issue of immigration? We’re talking about the border here, talking about police, ICE, Customs and Border Patrol.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Yeah. So, as one of those interviewees mentioned, there are concerns in the community about Elon Musk, effectively, potentially being able to create his own police department in the city of Starbase. I would say that I’ve asked SpaceX what their intentions are on that matter, and they haven’t responded to us, so we don’t know exactly what they’re going to do.

But I think, you know, this is a community that feels the issues of immigration very pertinently. The last time I was there was during the child separation crisis in 2017. I remember very vividly sitting in courtrooms in Brownsville watching parents beg to be reunited with their children. And I think the scars of that episode from Trump’s first term are still felt very pertinently, and when people articulate concerns about Elon Musk’s presence in their county and the potential creation of law enforcement there, that is partly what’s on their mind.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the program that law enforcement agencies are signing up for.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: So, as part of my job on The Guardian's investigations team, I've been looking into these 287(g) agreements, which have been around since 1996. They are a partnership program between ICE and local law enforcement that essentially expands ICE’s deportation mission to municipalities and local law enforcement agencies across the country. They’ve been, as I said, in place since 1996. They saw a relative growth post-9/11 and then during Trump’s first term.

What we noticed during our investigation was that what is going on now is, quite literally, unprecedented. There are now over 500 agencies across the United States with these 287(g) agreements, which is local law enforcement partnering with ICE to carry out certain immigration enforcement activity. In the entire history of this program, that number has never been over 150. So, what we have seen, basically, in the space of a hundred days, is over 300 law enforcement agencies signing 390 memorandums with ICE across the country, so in 38 states. It’s quite an unprecedented surge, and it has civil rights Advocates very, very concerned.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Sheriff Bill Rogers in North Carolina?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Yeah. So, one of the things that we did as part of this investigation was try to look at law enforcement agencies that had previously applied to this program and been denied, and then were, then, you know, inserted back into the program in this kind of new surge of agreements. And one of the agencies that we identified was the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina, headed by Bill Rogers, the sheriff there.

And we thought it was quite an interesting finding to see that this agency had been implicated in a number of rights scandals very, very recently — so, had just settled a lawsuit with a detainee in the jail who was almost beaten to death — it was a neglect lawsuit; was fighting allegations of his deputies assaulting people during a violent arrest, literally a few weeks ago; and at the same time all this was going on, despite having previously been denied, in 2007, was literally allowed onto the program. And what we’ve kind of uncovered, we think, is, effectively, a kind of rubber-stamping program. So, all of these oversight mechanisms that were previously in place under Joe Biden, which effectively froze the program, have been done away with. And these agreements are, we understand, basically being approved without any rigorous scrutiny at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Florida. You report four of the five agencies identified by The Guardian that had been previously rejected, had previously rejected and then approved in Trump’s second term, are situated in Florida. And then you also talk about Maricopa, in Maricopa County in Arizona.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Yeah. So, Florida is a very interesting case study, because the surge in these new agreements is happening majoritarily in Florida. So, over half the new agreements that are happening under 287(g) are happening in Florida because the conservative governor there, Ron DeSantis, has enacted a number of laws that essentially compel sheriff’s departments to take part in this program, and has exerted political pressure on various municipal departments, as well, to take part in that.

What I think a lot of experts who have looked at our findings were quite disturbed by is that the model that is being used in Florida and in other agencies across the country is a model that was effectively phased out in 2012. This is a task force model. There are a number of different 287(g) models. The task force model is one in which law enforcement agencies and trained officers are allowed to try and carry out immigration duties during their everyday patrol duties, as well. And there are very significant lessons from the past when it comes to the task force model. There are reasons why it was phased out in 2012. And the jurisdiction that comes to most people’s mind when they think about task forces is Maricopa County under the leadership of Joe Arpaio. So, there was a DOJ investigation into that, which I’m sure your listeners and viewers will be familiar with, that found pervasive bias in the way in which this agreement was carried out, Latino residents in Maricopa County being singled out during — disproportionately during traffic stops, checkpoints being set up in majority-Latino neighborhoods, and examples of, you know, outright racism from senior leaders in that department, too.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to another investigation you’ve been doing, around ICE jails and courts and what you call “Detention Alley.” You’re just back from Texas, you’re based in Louisiana — two states that are home to what human rights advocates call “Detention Alley,” along with Mississippi. You were the first reporter to visit the ICE courts in the detention centers there over the years, and now Trump’s using them as part of his mass deportation effort and crackdown on international students, like Mahmoud Khalil, like Rümeysa Öztürk. Can you explain what these jails are, these so-called detention facilities?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Yeah. So, 14 of the country’s 20 largest detention facilities are housed in this sort of strip that has been described as “Detention Alley,” which begins in southeastern Texas, spans through Louisiana and into Mississippi. And I think, you know, the case of Mahmoud Khalil has really brought renewed focus onto this particular area of the country, and particularly the detention facilities there. So, as you mentioned — 

AMY GOODMAN: He’s in Jena, right?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: He’s in Jena. So, I first visited that facility in 2017 during Trump’s first term, when it was first opened as an immigration court. They used to fly judges in from all over the country to try and fast-track removals cases. And what I observed there was shocking to me. It was the first time I’ve been to a facility like that, seeing various due process concerns. Obviously, the majority of people who are brought into these facilities do not have legal counsel. There is no automatic right to legal representation in immigration removal proceedings. But also, it was a facility that had been plagued with neglect allegations. There had been about four or five deaths that had happened in the space of about a year, year and a half.

And so, I decided, after Mahmoud Khalil was brought to that facility, just to go and observe another day, not when his hearing was being held, but just to see the sorts of cases that are being brought through there. And it was a real sense of déjà vu for me. A lot of the issues that I had previously reported in 2017 were still there, were arguably, you know, more apparent than they were then. So, I witnessed an individual just abandoning his asylum application because he said he was too sick to carry on and wasn’t getting the right medical help in this detention facility, people who had been brought in from hundreds and hundreds of miles away, from states like Florida, with no access to legal counsel, very limited access to telephone contact, that sort of thing. And I think, you know, on the one hand, what’s happening to Mahmoud Khalil is, and many of the other student protesters, an exceptional escalation of immigration enforcement and an attack on free speech, but, on the other hand, the processes in which they are, you know, being subjected to, the conditions they’re being subjected to, is an old story and one that has repeated itself for many, many years.

AMY GOODMAN: And the owner of this one?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: This is a GEO Group facility.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about another GEO Group jail, South Louisiana ICE Processing Center. This is the one where Rümeysa Öztürk, the Fulbright scholar, the Tufts graduate student, the international student, was sent after being surrounded by masked agents, being told that her visa has been revoked. She’s learning of it at that moment. She’s taken to Vermont, and then ultimately ends up where?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Exactly, in the South Louisiana detention center. Again, it’s another one of these very remote facilities. I personally haven’t visited that one. But I think the kind of — the common theme with a lot of these remote detention centers, in Louisiana, in Mississippi, is, advocates will tell you, people are transferred there by design. They are difficult to reach.

AMY GOODMAN: This is in what? Basile, Louisiana?

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: That’s right, yeah, yeah. So, it’s about three or four hours outside of New Orleans. You know, access to legal services are very, very difficult for people to get hold of. There’s not a huge amount of pro bono legal activity in Louisiana. There are some excellent groups who do good work there, but there are, you know, as I mentioned, thousands of detainees in Louisiana, which has the second-highest number of immigration detainees in the country. So, people will tell you it’s by design. These are isolated facilities where it’s hard to reach legal counsel. It’s hard to have visitation with your loved ones. And at the same time, you know, they are facilities that are plagued with rights violations — allegations of rights violations and poor medical care.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about that, the ACLU of Louisiana recently filing a complaint around inadequate access to medical care, stating guards left detained people suffering from severe conditions like external bleeding, tremors, sprained limbs unattended to, refusing them access to diagnostic care. This was like six months ago this was filed.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: This was six months ago. And my understanding was that that complaint was actually taken up by the Department of Homeland Security’s Civil Rights Office, which has since been completely gutted by the Trump administration. And my assumption on that case is that — 

AMY GOODMAN: This is the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Homeland Security, and Trump has gutted the whole department.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Precisely, yeah. So, my assumption with that particular complaint is that it will have gone nowhere under Trump’s administration.

AMY GOODMAN: So, as you come to New York and you do this work, “Anywhere but Washington,” D.C., talk about what it’s important for people to understand, not only in these areas like Detention Alley, but around the world, for what’s happening. We get these few snapshots because of cases that the media is focusing on, from Rümeysa to Mahmoud, but there are so many thousands of others, you point out, are being held.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: I think what I have thought about in this second Trump era is just the importance of bearing witness as a journalist, whether that is, you know, taking a visit to an immigration court in a detained setting, going to a remote location in Starbase to follow an election. So much of the mania and chaos that exists in this kind of new era of Trumpism seems to be kind of derived from chaotic meetings in the Oval Office and Trump’s latest posts on social media. But I think when we really think about the people who are most affected, most vulnerable, they’re often in remote, difficult places to reach, and it’s important that journalists turn up and bear witness.

AMY GOODMAN: And also, they’re in such remote, small areas that often almost the whole town is employed by this private company, and so it makes it harder to shut it down.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, you know, there’s a well-established kind of trajectory of detention centers, you know, not just in the United States. I used to cover immigration detention in Australia, you know, making — yeah, setting up industry in places that are difficult to reach, with small populations, and becoming embedded in the economy, so it’s a sort of, you know, mutual relationship which is dependent.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you for being with us, Oliver Laughland, Guardian U.S. southern bureau chief and investigations correspondent, usually based in New Orleans, just back from reporting on the vote to incorporate the richest man in the world’s company SpaceX company town. They’ve just incorporated it. It’s in South Texas. It’s called Starbase. We’ll link to Oliver’s recent investigations, “Trump officials increasingly recruit local police for immigration enforcement despite 'red flags,'” as well as “'Detention Alley': inside the Ice centres in the US south where foreign students and undocumented migrants languish.” This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.