Nicolás Maduro is being held in a New York City jail notorious for its high-profile inmates and dangerous conditions.
The Venezuelan president and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured by the U.S. military overnight Saturday and flown to the U.S., where they face federal criminal charges related to alleged drug trafficking and weapons.
They are now awaiting trial in New York from the confines of Metropolitan Detention Center, or MDC, a federal jail in Brooklyn with a scandal-plagued history.
A number of prominent figures have passed through MDC in recent years while waiting for sentencing — Luigi Mangione, for example, is held there now.
Other previous residents include Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, President Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli, singer R. Kelly, crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Its previous roster also includes other world leaders. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was detained at MDC after his extradition and arrest on drug trafficking and firearms charges in 2022. Ironically, Trump pardoned him in December 2025 even as he ramped up pressure on Maduro.
Despite its high profile, the jail has struggled with issues of overcrowding, violence, medical neglect and inmate deaths in recent years — prompting several judges to refuse to send people there.
After killings in 2024, officials say the prison is safe
Before disgraced rap mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs spent time in MDC, his lawyers unsuccessfully lobbied the judge in his case to keep him out of jail in part because of the dire conditions there.
They wrote in a letter that several district courts had already recognized MDC is "not fit for pre-trial detention," quoting previous cases that described overcrowding, staffing issues, food contamination, hazardous physical conditions and violence at the facility.
That year, at least two judges refused to order defendants to MDC because of its issues.
One judge said he would vacate a 75-year-old's tax fraud charges and place him under house arrest rather than send him to MDC, citing "inhumane treatment" at the facility. The other ordered a man convicted in a drug case to remain free until sentencing rather than wait in that particular facility.
"It has gotten to the point that it is routine [for federal judges in Manhattan and Brooklyn] to give reduced sentences to defendants based on the conditions of confinement in the M.D.C.," wrote Judge Jesse Furman of the Federal District Court in Manhattan in January 2024, as the facility spent its third week in lockdown after an assault on staff members.
Two inmates died in separate stabbing attacks in the summer of 2024 (nine others were later charged with the killings and other assaults). Combs' lawyers in their letter also pointed to reports of at least four inmate deaths by suicide in the previous three years.
The federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) said at the time that it was working to address staffing and other challenges, including by adding medical staff and responding to more than 700 backlogged maintenance requests.
But issues persisted, including "constant lockdowns, medical mistreatment and botched cancer diagnoses, and complaints of maggot-infested food," according to New York state Sen. Andrew Gounardes.
"MDC is notorious for dangerous and inhumane conditions that have resulted in multiple inmate deaths, including medical neglect, abuse, severe understaffing, and extreme temperatures," he said in July 2025.
In a September 2025 fact sheet, the BOP said there had been a "substantial decrease in violence, limits on the inmates' scheduled time out of their cells, and attempted introductions of contraband" at the jail since the previous year. They attributed that progress to more staff, fewer inmates, increased use of telehealth and facility repairs.
"In short, MDC Brooklyn is safe for the inmates and staff," it said.
New York City's only federal jail — at least for now
MDC opened in the early 1990s in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, intended as a hub for pre-trial detainees. It currently houses some 1,300 people, both men and women, according to the BOP.
A 2016 report from the National Association of Women Judges called its conditions "unconscionable," saying they violated both the American Bar Association's standards and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for Treatment of Prisoners.
"The absence of fresh, clean air, the complete absence of sunlight, and the absence of outdoor time and activities are immediate issues which BOP has failed to address in any meaningful fashion," it wrote.
The jail made national headlines in January 2019, when an electrical fire caused a week-long power outage. Its inhabitants were left without light or heat during a bitterly cold polar vortex, with temperatures as low as 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
A Justice Department investigation later determined that MDC and BOP management "took steps to ensure the safety and security of the facility during the power outage but failed to effectively manage other critical aspects of the situation," including addressing medical issues and communicating about the suspension of visits.
The federal government settled a class-action lawsuit on behalf of some 1,600 then-inmates for approximately $10 million in 2023.
The jail notably housed the first federal inmate to test positive for COVID-19 in March 2020.
During this period, MDC was one of two federal jails in New York City. But the federal government shuttered the other, Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), in August 2021, citing issues — like lax security and crumbling infrastructure — that came to light after Jeffrey Epstein's death by suicide there two years earlier.
MCC's population was moved to other jails and remains empty. While its closure at the time was billed as temporary, the Justice Department said in 2023 that its "future is unknown, as the BOP has not secured adequate funds to complete all the necessary repairs."
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