By Victoria Albert | Photographs by Daniella Zalcman for WSJ

JENA, La. -- When an oil glut in the 1980s sent the economy reeling in this quiet town hours north of New Orleans, local leaders knew it needed to diversify. A private-prison company stepped in.

GEO Group, now one of the major players in corrections, built a facility in Jena in the late 1990s. It later won a contract to run the site as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.

"It's been a very successful facility, and it's done a lot of good for our parish," said Walter Dorroh Jr., president of the region's economic-development group for roughly 35 years. GEO is the third-largest employer in the area, he said.

The center, tucked on an empty, flower-dotted road on the outskirts of town, has been thrust into a nationwide debate over the Trump administration's crackdown on what it says is antisemitism on college campuses.

Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil has been detained there since March, following his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. His supporters have called his arrest retaliation for legal speech.

The roughly 4,000-person town, where residents say they recognize people on every trip to Walmart, has since played host to lawmakers, protesters and national media, who have come to see the facility for themselves.

Jena's residents say the attention is unusual and a bit perplexing. They reject the idea that the site -- or who is held there -- is central to the town's identity.

"The fact that he's 4 miles away, or 40, or 400 makes no difference to me," said Steven Kendrick, a 50-year-old lawyer who has practiced in the town for decades.

'What a community would want'

Dorroh credited the Florida-based GEO Group as one of several industries that helped Jena move past its economic hardships.

The 1,160-bed Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, one of eight ICE detention facilities in the state, houses men undergoing civil immigration proceedings.

GEO Group, known then as the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, struck an agreement in the late '90s to open a 276-bed juvenile-detention facility where the ICE center now sits, Dorroh said. It was quickly closed amid allegations of abuse and neglect. Wackenhut denied wrongdoing at the time.

The site sat dormant from roughly 2000 to 2007, when GEO Group won the ICE contract. The facility now provides roughly 250 jobs to the parish, Dorroh said.

Tom Kendrick, the parish assessor, said it was the area's third-largest taxpayer in 2024, paying roughly $950,000 to the parish and $35,000 to Jena.

"They're what a community would want as a business partner," said Craig Franklin, co-owner and editor in chief of newspaper the Jena Times.

GEO Group provides thousands of dollars in scholarships each year and sponsors a luncheon in town each quarter, the 56-year-old said.

In 2022, according to the Jena Times, Mayor LaDawn Edwards designated the first week of May as "National Correctional Employee Week."

'A Nice Place to Call Home'

At Miss B's Place, a sunny cafe a few miles from the facility, locals lunched on sandwiches, green beans and soda on a warm Wednesday afternoon. A plaque in the bathroom reminded visitors to wash their hands and pray, "because Jesus & germs are everywhere."

To locals like retired teacher Betsy Warwick, Jena is best described as a town with avid churchgoers, kind neighbors and a fierce devotion to school sports teams.

It is summed up, she said, by a large sign perched on the eastern edge of town labeling Jena "A Nice Place to Call Home."

The 46-year-old said outsiders shouldn't equate Jena with the detention facility and bristled at an article that had emphasized the town's distance from New Orleans.

"It was almost like they were trying to say, 'Oh, they just put him out there in the country, in the woods, and it's so rural,' " she said. "Like, we're here, you know."

One of those outsiders is Em Dunaway, a 27-year-old baker who drove from New Orleans with friends earlier this month to attend one of Khalil's immigration hearings.

"I see that he was unlawfully moved so that people wouldn't support -- but no matter where you move this man, people are going to show up and support him," Dunaway said.

Before leaving Jena, the group posed in front of the "Nice Place to Call Home" sign with a banner reading "Free Palestine" and "Free Mahmoud Khalil."

'In the right and by the law'

President Trump received 91% of the vote in LaSalle parish. Several Jena residents said they were waiting to see what evidence the government had against Khalil before making a judgment on his case.

"If you're in the right and by the law, then that is what the majority of our people will be in support of," Franklin, the newspaper editor, said from his office, flanked by a golden dachshund-Pomeranian mix named Titan.

Not all have had a welcoming experience. Immigration attorney Lara Nochomovitz came to Jena just before the Covid-19 pandemic, and helped find lodging for a few hundred detainees released from ICE facilities before she left in 2021.

The 44-year-old said locals called the police several times on the migrants she was caring for, and in one instance accused a pair, who were out walking her dog, of casing houses in a Facebook post.

"Neighbors said that they were 'locked and loaded' and ready, like, if anyone messed with them," she said.

A second national scrutiny

This isn't the first time Jena has been in the national spotlight.

Nearly two decades ago, nooses were found in Jena under a schoolyard tree. Soon after, six Black students -- known as the Jena Six -- were accused of beating a white student unconscious. Five were charged with attempted murder but the charges were later reduced.

Chauncey Hardy, pastor at L&A Baptist Church, said there is more to be done in Jena, especially on economic inequality. But the 61-year-old, vice president of a group created after the incident to promote unity, said he has been heartened by the progress he has seen.

"We're still not perfect. I mean, this is the South, too -- are we as liberal as New Orleans? We're not," he said. "But, you know, do we have all the hatred that people think we have for each other? We don't."

Write to Victoria Albert at victoria.albert@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 25, 2025 10:56 ET (14:56 GMT)

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