Just days ago, Nicolás Maduro was in Caracas serving as the President of Venezuela. But after being deposed and captured by American forces, he abruptly finds himself in very different environs: behind the bars of a notorious Brooklyn jail.
The Metropolitan Detention Center lies in the relatively quiet neighborhood of Sunset Park, where it houses roughly 1,300 inmates in an industrial area near the waterfront. The jail, which has been the scene of a number of deaths and instances of alleged abuse and neglect, has previously been described as “barbaric” and “hell on earth” by judges and lawyers. Several other high-profile offenders have passed through its cells as they awaited trial in recent years, from singer R. Kelly to Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland to Jeffrey Epstein’s long-time associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Now, the deposed Venezuelan president has joined their ranks.
Maduro, who was seized in a U.S.-led raid on Saturday, is being held at the facility as he faces federal charges including narco-terrorism conspiracy and cocaine-importation conspiracy. His wife, Cilia Flores, has also been charged, along with his son and other Venezuelan officials.
Maduro and Flores were booked into the M.D.C. late Saturday, after they were transported from Caracas by helicopter, warship, and plane.
Read more: A President Captured: How the Elite Delta Force Raid in Caracas Unfolded
The couple remains in custody after each pleading not guilty on Monday in a New York courtroom; they will await their next court appearance, set for March 17, in the jail, which serves as a sort of way station for detainees before trial or sentencing.
The M.D.C., one of the largest federal lockups in the country, has a troubled history, filled with scandal and alleged mismanagement.
Multiple guards at the facility were arrested and charged with committing sexual offenses against inmates in 2017 and later convicted. In May 2018, a former lieutenant at the M.D.C, Eugenio Perez, was convicted of sexually assaulting five female inmates who prosecutors said he forced to perform oral sex on him. A jury separately found former lieutenant Carlos Richard Martinez guilty of repeatedly raping a female inmate that January. Months earlier, former corrections officer Armando Moronta pleaded guilty to sexually abusing three female inmates.
Reports and attorneys have also raised accusations of unsanitary and dangerous conditions at the jail. In late January 2019, for instance, over a thousand inmates at the M.D.C.were left in freezing cells after the facility lost power and heat for at least a week, The New York Times reported, citing federal public defenders and the corrections officers’ union. One federal defender said they had been told by an inmate that a corrections officer measured the temperature in a housing unit at 34 degrees, and that cells had been colder still.
The Bureau of Prisons acknowledged an electrical failure at the time and said it was tied to Con Edison. The utility disputed that claim, saying the outage was an internal problem at the jail.
In another instance, an attorney for Joseph Elias, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to use fire to commit a felony and was held at the jail for more than 20 months, alleged in May 2024 that his client was served food containing maggots in the M.D.C.’s segregated housing unit, as well as meals including fish, despite a documented allergy.
The same year, two inmates were killed at the jail. In June 2024, Uriel Whyte was fatally stabbed by two inmates while awaiting trial on weapons possession charges, according to the Justice Department. A month later, Edwin Cordero, who was serving time for assault in violation of his supervised release after serving time for wire fraud, was allegedly beaten and stabbed in the heart by three inmates.
That September, a federal judge threatened to vacate the prison sentence of a 75-year-old convicted on tax fraud charges if he were designated to serve time at the M.D.C. and instead place the man on house arrest, citing “dangerous, barbaric conditions” at the Brooklyn jail.
The facility “is hell on earth for anyone unfortunate enough to live there,” Mark Bederow, a criminal-defense attorney and former Manhattan prosecutor, told Business Insider following news that Sean “Diddy” Combs would be transferred to the M.D.C. that month.
In a press release last June, the Legal Aid Society described the jail as having a “documented history of violence, medical neglect, and human and civil rights violations.”
Amid the deaths and accusations, the M.D.C. has continued to hold hundreds of inmates—including some of the country’s most infamous accused criminals. The Venezuelan president and his wife join Luigi Mangione, who faces state and federal charges in the December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, as current denizens of the notorious jail.
Read more: How Trump’s Venezuela Takeover Could Change the World
Another ex-Latin American leader, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, was also recently detained there while awaiting trial on drug charges after his 2022 extradition. While at the jail, Hernández received legal advice from yet another high-profile inmate: the founder of the bankrupt bitcoin exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried. Hernández remained at the jail until his conviction in March 2024, after which he was transferred to a facility in West Virginia.President Donald Trump pardoned the former Honduran President last year—even as he ramped up pressure on Maduro over the Venezuelan leader’s alleged involvement in the illegal drug trade.
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