Deadly stabbings, “barbaric” living conditions, and maggots in the food: this is the state of the notorious New York prison that ousted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro now calls home.
Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on Saturday night, just hours after a U.S. military attack on their country ended with them being extracted from Caracas via helicoper, warship, and plane.
They will stay there until he faces trial on several charges, including Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy.
Maduro is scheduled to appear before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, 92, in a Lower Manhattan federal courtoom at 12 p.m. ET Monday to answer those charges, which could ultimately see him kept behind bars for the rest of his life.
He is being flown to the hearing across the Hudson River by helicopter, according to Bloomberg, via a route that will take him over New York Harbor and past the Statue of Liberty and Wall Street to an awaiting motorcade.
Bail is unlikely to be set and Maduro is unlikely to reach trial until 2027 at the earliest. It is not yet known whether he has hired legal representation.
The facility in which Maduro and Flores are currently being held, alongside approximately 1,330 other inmates, is no stranger to famous faces, having previously housed Sean “Diddy” Combs, sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, Luigi Mangione, Sam Bankman-Fried, Fyre Festival fraudster Billy McFarland, and rapper R Kelly, who was found guilty of child sexual abuse.
Former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernandez was also held there prior to his guilty conviction in 2024 on cocaine trafficking charges. He was subsequently moved to another jail in West Virginia before being pardoned by President Donald Trump last year.
Before Diddy’s trial, his lawyers argued that “several courts in this district have recognized that the conditions at Metropolitan Detention Center are not fit for pre-trial detention.”
“Just earlier this summer, an inmate was murdered,” the lawyers said, according to The Daily Beast. “At least four inmates have died by suicide there in the past three years.”
MDC has been plagued by violence, chronic understaffing, a lack of medical care and unsanitary conditions for some time, with inmates reportedly complaining of rotten food, thin mattresses, and broken toilets.
In 2024, inmate Uriel Whyte was stabbed to death within its walls while awaiting trial on gun charges.
Many have spoken out about the “barbaric” conditions inside the prison, with one inmate claiming the jail sees stabbings “at least a couple of times a week.”
“One guy was stabbed in the eye with a makeshift knife,” the inmate, only named as Eli, told Spectrum News NY1.
“And these knives, again, I have never been to jail. This is my first time in jail, but these knives are six, nine inches long sometimes, you know, homemade with materials from the steel walls. It’s very violent. There’s stabbings, there’s stabbings at least a couple times a week.”
The outlet also obtained video which showed cockroaches in people’s meals, broken lights and mold in the showers.
In another criminal case, federal Judge Gary Brown threatened to vacate the sentence of a 75-year-old who was convicted of a tax scam if he was sent to the facility because of the “dangerous” and “barbaric” conditions, The Brooklyn Eagle reported.
His ruling referenced two murders and a stabbing that “went unchallenged” by officers until it was almost over.
“These incidents demonstrate a woeful lack of supervision, breakdown of order, and an environment of lawlessness that constitute unacceptable, reprehensible and deadly mismanagement,” he said in court documents.
David Patton, former head of Federal Defenders of New York, told NY1: “A lack of medical care to real serious sanitation issues to maggots in the food to violence, everything you can think about that’s problematic at a jail or prison is problematic at the MDC, and it has been for a very long time.”
In 2019, more than a thousand inmates were stuck in freezing cells for days when there was no heating following a power outage in the middle of winter, according to reports at the time.
All of which will provide a marked contrast with the life Maduro once lived inside the sprawling military complex of Fort Tiuna in Caracas.
The Venezuelan public rarely saw inside their president’s living quarters as most of his public events were conducted from Miraflores Palace, a 19th century French neo-baroque mansion, known for its large courtyard, lavish interior decor of fine chandeliers and carpets and walls lined with portaits of the country’s national heroes.
Maduro was known for addressing his supporters from the palace’s balcony during government-organized rallies.
Confinement in the MDC “will test the strongest mind,” Justin Paperny, a prison consultant who has advised clients held at the facility, told Bloomberg.
He said that Maduro’s communications while inside will be closely observed and his movements managed, with his security and safety given priority over his personal comfort.
