Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York, a jail known for housing high-profile criminals, after being flown to the U.S. to face charges including narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine.
Maduro to be held in ‘special housing unit’
Judi Garrett, former assistant director at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, told Fox News she expected Mr. Maduro to be held within a “special housing unit” at the MDC.
“I would expect [Mr Maduro] would be held in [a special housing unit] at the outset and then [be] moved into one of the ‘special’ units where other high-profile individuals have been held,” she said.
Mr Maduro is being held in the same facility where Sean “Diddy” Combs was detained ahead of his trial. (AP: Mark Von Holden)
Sean “P Diddy” Combs was moved into the MDC’s Special Housing Unit while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2024. Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former fixer, told CNN that Combs would wake up staring at “cinder block painted white walls”.
“He’s waking up on a steel bed with a one-and-a-half-inch mattress, no pillow, in an 8-by-10-foot cell that I can assure you is disgusting,” he said.
Combs was later found guilty on two counts of a lesser charge.
Infamous inmates
Other past visitors of the MDC include RnB singer R Kelly, crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Mr. Maduro is not the first president of a country to be locked up there. Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, was imprisoned at MDC Brooklyn while he was on trial for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US. Convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison, Hernández was pardoned and freed by Mr. Trump in December.
Current detainees include the co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, and Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare.
US news network NBC published CCTV footage showing gang members stabbing an inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Center. (Supplied)
A litany of complaints
Built in the 1990s to combat overcrowding in New York’s jails, the MDC was designed to house 1,000 inmates. It presently houses about 1,300 to 1,600.
The facility is so troubled that some judges have refused to send people there. Detainees and their lawyers have long complained about understaffing and rampant violence. Two prisoners were killed by other inmates in 2024, and jail workers have been charged with accepting bribes or providing contraband.
During the winter of 2019, a power outage plunged the facility and its inmates into cold darkness for a week.
A lawyer for an inmate who died in a prison fight at the MDC in 2024 told the New York Times his client was “another victim of MDC Brooklyn, an overcrowded, understaffed and neglected federal jail that is hell on earth”.
The MDC has drawn more scrutiny since 2021, when the Bureau of Prisons closed its other New York City jail — the Metropolitan Correctional Center — after Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide there highlighted its lax security, crumbling infrastructure and dangerous, squalid conditions.
The federal Bureau of Prisons says it has worked to improve conditions at the MDC. The facility added correctional and medical staff, remedying more than 700 backlogged maintenance requests and answering judges’ concerns. Improvements were also made to electrical and plumbing lines, food service and heating and air conditioning systems.
In addition to the physical upgrades, federal authorities have tried to crack down on crime. Last March, 23 inmates were charged with offences ranging from smuggling weapons in a Doritos bag to the stabbing of a man convicted in the killing of hip-hop legend Jam Master Jay.
“In short, MDC Brooklyn is safe for the inmates and staff,” the Bureau of Prisons said in September. The inmate population also decreased from 1,580 as of January 2024, which, it said, led to a “substantial decrease” in crime and contraband.
While there, Mr. Maduro is likely to see some familiar faces if he is allowed out of the isolated quarters where he will initially be housed. One is co-defendant Hugo Carvajal, the former Venezuelan spy chief who broke ranks with Maduro in 2019 and has indicated that he wants to cooperate with US authorities.
There is also Anderson Zambrano-Pacheco, an alleged member of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang who was arrested last year in New York on firearms charges. Mr. Zambrano-Pacheco was among those caught on security video terrorising residents at an apartment complex in a Denver suburb, an incident that Mr. Trump seized on during his presidential campaign.
Mr. Maduro and his wife are expecting to have their first court hearing on Monday morning local time.
ABC/AP
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