Inside the notorious Brooklyn jail where Nicolás Maduro is being held

Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan President captured by the United States on Saturday, is being held in a notorious Brooklyn jail complex that has been plagued by scandal and accusations of mismanagement.

The Metropolitan Detention Centre is a hulking facility in Brooklyn that, for decades, has held some of the United States’ most infamous accused criminals as they await trial.

Known as the MDC, the jail is one of the largest federal lockups in the country, housing around 1,600 inmates at any given time. While some face serious charges like international drug trafficking or terrorism, a vast majority face lesser crimes.

The jail centre is a sort of way station for the detainees before a trial or sentencing.

It is also deeply troubled. In recent years, it has been the scene of stabbings and killings. It became New York City’s only federal jail center in 2021, when the Justice Department shut down the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan, at least temporarily, because of deteriorating conditions.

In 2019, the Brooklyn complex was plunged into a week-long blackout when the jail’s heating and electricity shut down during a polar vortex, with temperatures in the city dipping into the single digits.

A Justice Department report found that officials had gravely mishandled the crisis.

Maduro, who was taken to the jail on Saturday, will join the ranks of high-profile detainees who have passed through the MDC. Luigi Mangione, who faces state and federal charges in the December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, is being held there while he awaits trial.

And the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, was detained there after he was extradited in 2022 on charges of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and using machine guns as part of that conspiracy. While detained, he received legal advice from a fellow inmate, crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

Hernández was convicted, but President Donald Trump pardoned him last month.

Others who have been detained at the MDC include Ghislaine Maxwell, the partner of convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein; music mogul Sean Combs, known as Diddy; and singer R. Kelly.

For much of Sunday, the area outside the jail, which is in an industrial section of the Sunset Park neighbourhood near the waterfront, was relatively quiet.

But late in the morning, more than 100 protesters, some holding signs that said “No US War On Venezuela,” gathered across the street, marching in a circle and chanting, “We want justice; you say how? Free Maduro right now,” and “No more coups; no more wars; Venezuela isn’t yours.”

The protest lasted about two hours. “The President does not have the right to take unilateral military action against another country and detain its President,” said Zoe Alexandra, a volunteer with the Answer Coalition, a group that opposes war and racism and that helped organise the demonstration.

Maduro faces federal charges of narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States. He and his wife, Cilia Flores, are expected to make their first court appearance soon in Manhattan.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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