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BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA
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M o n d ay, a p r i l 21, 2025
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EBR Parish started year with fewer homicides than in ’24 Experts caution against making predictions
BY QUINN COFFMAN | Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By CHRIS GRANGER
A truck with a Louisiana license plate makes one of two passes within 10 minutes purposely pushing out dark clouds of exhaust from its diesel engine next to faith leaders and protesters April 11 outside the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Jena. The crowd was supporting Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil after judges ruled he could be deported.
In a small Louisiana town, national spotlight returns Jena’s ICE detention center has become a significant presence in the area
BY JOHN SIMERMAN | Staff writer JENA — A group of protesters stood outside the federal immigration center in this central Louisiana town a few weeks ago, calling for it to be emptied, when a truck rolled past and belched a plume of exhaust at them. The driver circled around as the group faced a bank of TV news cameras set up in the brush across the road, then repeated the act — a greeting of sorts to a hamlet in the pines that once again has drawn a national media glare. The protesters had trekked 230 miles that morning from New Orleans to support Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, now in his second month at the detention center, where a judge that day had found him deportable. It’s here, at a compound cut into the pines a few miles from downtown Jena, that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have sent Khalil and some other noncitizens and students targeted for removal by President Donald Trump’s administration,
After the first quarter of 2025, East Baton Rouge Parish is on pace to see a slight decline in the annual number of homicides compared with 2024, but it would remain within its new normal of 100 or more for the year. Twenty-five homicides were reported in the parish between Jan. 1 and March 31, a decrease of nearly 31% from the same period last year, when the number was 36. A year with fewer homicides would also finally align East Baton Rouge with trends that show rates of violent crime falling significantly across the country. District Attorney Hillar Moore said he sees the parish slowly descending from the COVID-19 pandemic’s peak of crime to find its place among other cities. “When you start with a year with 150 murders, that COVID year, and you start coming down every year since then, other cities came down more rapidly than we did, but we are getting back down to that normal,” Moore said. The first-quarter homicide number projects to a total of 100 by the end of 2025. That is not only lower than 2024, which finished with 113, it would be tied with 2023 for the lowest number of killings since the pandemic.
ä See HOMICIDES, page 3A
STAFF FILE PHOTO By HILARy SCHEINUK
Faith leaders and supporters walk outside the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Jena, which is holding Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil. Advocates for Khalil and other recent detainees say they’ve been spirited to remote areas like Jena with a purpose: to ä See SPOTLIGHT, page 4A confound access to their lawyers and challenges to deportation.
East Baton Rouge Parish is on pace to see a slight decline in the annual number of homicides this year compared with 2024, but it would remain within its new normal of 100 or more for the year.
Carbon Tulane archaeologists discover ancient Mayan city capture faces New technology paints stricter rules clearer picture of region BY JENNA ROSS | Staff writer Discovering Mayan cities used to involve bushwhacking through the jungle, schlepping gear and sidestepping snakes. And over the course of his career, professor Marcello Canuto has done plenty of that. Still does, sometimes. But these days, the discoveries are coming from a dark, cool computer lab on the Tulane University campus. That lab is the new star of the Middle American Research Institute, an enduring font of information about Indigenous America, especially the ancient Maya, who lived in what is today southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. For decades,
ä See CITY, page 5A
WEATHER HIGH 84 LOW 67 PAGE 10C
Tulane University professor Marcello Canuto, left, reviews LIDAR images with graduate student Miguel Garcia at the Middle American Research Institute in New Orleans this month. New technology is giving researchers a better view of ancient civilizations. STAFF PHOTO By SOPHIA GERMER
House committee to tackle two dozen related bills
BY DAVID J. MITCHELL | Staff writer Over the past four years, $49 billion in new industrial projects have been proposed in Louisiana to make hydrogen, ammonia and other products — and all of them are banking on permanent underground storage of the greenhouse gas pollution they would produce. “Carbon capture and sequestration” is a major economic development focus in Louisiana, given the state’s suitable geology and the industry’s move toward reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to climate change.
Classified .....................6C Deaths .........................7A Nation-World ................2A Comics-Puzzles .....3C-5C Living............................1C Opinion ........................8A Commentary ................9A Metro ...........................6A Sports ..........................1B
ä See CAPTURE, page 5A
100TH yEAR, NO. 295