Maduro Is Being Held at a Notorious Brooklyn Jail

The Brooklyn jail holding Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is a facility so troubled that some judges have refused to send people there even as it has housed such famous inmates as music stars R. Kelly and Sean "Diddy" Combs. Opened in the early 1990s, the Metropolitan Detention Center, or MDC Brooklyn, currently houses about 1,300 inmates, the AP reports. It's the routine landing spot for people awaiting trial in federal courts in Manhattan and Brooklyn, holding alleged gangsters and drug traffickers alongside some people accused of white collar crimes.

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 President Trump in December. Current detainees include the co-founder of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, and Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Past inmates have included crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried and longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

Located next to a shopping mall in a waterfront industrial area and within sight of the Statue of Liberty, the jail has been described, at its worst, as a "hell on earth" and an "ongoing tragedy." Detainees and their lawyers have long complained about 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. Recently, however, the federal Bureau of Prisons says it has worked to improve conditions. 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 Epstein's suicide there highlighted its lax security, crumbling infrastructure, and dangerous, squalid conditions.

While at the MDC 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. Zambrano-Pacheco was among those caught on security video terrorizing residents at an apartment complex in a Denver suburb, an incident that Trump seized on during his presidential campaign.