Elon Musk’s Dusty Texas Town Needs Some Law and Order

Gizmodo · Feb 20, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Last year, people living near SpaceX’s launch site in Texas voted in favor of turning Starbase into its own city. Elon Musk’s company town has already stood up a volunteer fire department and is working on its police force. Next on the agenda: Starbase is going to create its own court, according to a new report from Techcrunch. “With the recent decision to create the Starbase Police Department, we need to proceed with establishing, staffing and organizing the operations of a Municipal Court,” the city administrator wrote in a memo about the proposed ordinance submitted on Wednesday and obtained by Techcrunch. “If the attached ordinance is approved, it is our hope that we will have a recommendation at the next Commission meeting on the appointment of the Judge. It is our intent to involve the new Judge to assist with the development of court procedures, selection of court software, hiring and training of the Court Clerk and other start-up requirements.” The memo notes that the court will only be a “part-time operation” but that there are “a number of statutory requirements that have to be met with any municipal court.” In May 2025, Starbase became its own city because residents voted overwhelmingly for it 212-6, with those residents largely being company employees. Today, the city of roughly 2 square miles has over 580 people, and construction captured by a Getty Images photographer shows it’s growing a little more vertically with each passing day. The Cameron County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) currently provides law enforcement services to Starbase, but the city administrator writes, “the CCSO is unable to meet the city’s evolving needs due to several critical limitations.” Those limitations apparently include a lack of dedicated resources for Starbase, a relatively isolated geographic location that makes it difficult for deputies to arrive quickly, and expanding emergency call volumes due to the growing size of the city. The city administrator also notes in a memo that there have been “hiring and staffing challenges” at CCSO, though they didn’t elaborate on why that might be the case. A Cameron County Sheriff’s Office jailer was arrested last month for allegedly bringing a controlled substance into the jail. He’s been charged with bringing a prohibited substance into a correctional facility as well as bribery. As Techcrunch notes, it will likely take another six months before the Starbase Police Department (SBPD) is up and running. And the city is still using CCSO jail facilities in the interim. The area now officially incorporated as Starbase saw an increase in emergency calls over recent years, according to a memo submitted for the meeting on Wednesday. Law enforcement calls in 2025 totaled 420, up from 70 in 2019. There were 180 fire service calls in 2025, up from 40 in 2019, and 140 EMS calls in 2025, up from 10 in 2019. Starbase, which sits right on the U.S.-Mexico border, is home to SpaceX’s rocket factory, and nearly all the private land belongs to the company. But that could soon change. Another item on Wednesday’s city meeting agenda involved annexing 7,133 acres of surrounding land into the city limits. The proposal notes that a petition will be sent to land owners, and there will be a public hearing on the annexation. The land Starbase plans to annex includes parts of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, an area intended to be a safe haven for hundreds of butterflies and birds. SpaceX has received criticism in the past from environmental activists for threatening nearby wetlands in Boca Chica. The city plans to annex about 1,000 acres currently owned by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, including Boca Chica State Park to the east. If history is any guide, Starbase is shaping up to be a company town that exists to serve the interests of its leader, Elon Musk, rather than the SpaceX employees and non-employee residents of the city. Pullman, Illinois, for example, was supposed to be a capitalist’s utopia. Founded by industrialist George Pullman in 1880, the town had Pullman-owned factories, Pullman-owned shops, and Pullman-owned housing. But it was tremendously exploitative and gouged workers on everything from rent to library fees. George Pullman was absolutely despised as a result. When Pullman died in 1897, his body was reportedly buried in thick concrete so that his workers couldn’t dig him up to desecrate his body. Given the tremendous amount of hate that people have for Musk, the wealthiest person in the world at $850 billion, it’s probably good that the billionaire plans to die on Mars.