Only a few days earlier, Nicolás Maduro was in Caracas acting as Venezuela’s President. Following his removal from power, he now suddenly occupies a starkly different setting: incarcerated within a famous Brooklyn detention facility.

Located in the mostly tranquil Sunset Park area, the Metropolitan Detention Center holds approximately 1,300 detainees in a waterfront industrial zone. The institution, site of several fatalities and accusations of abuse and neglect, has been labeled “barbaric” and “hell on earth” by members of the judiciary and legal profession. In recent years, numerous prominent defendants have occupied its cells while awaiting trial, ranging from musician R. Kelly to Fyre Festival mastermind Billy McFarland to a longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein. The ousted Venezuelan leader has now been added to this list.

Maduro, captured during a U.S.-coordinated operation on Saturday, is detained at the center as he confronts federal charges such as conspiring to commit narco-terrorism and conspiring to import cocaine. His spouse has been similarly charged, alongside his son and additional Venezuelan authorities.

Maduro and Flores were processed into the M.D.C. on Saturday night, following their journey from Caracas via helicopter, naval vessel, and aircraft.

The pair are still detained after separate court proceedings on Monday in a New York court; they will remain in the jail until their next scheduled hearing on March 17. The facility functions as a holding area for individuals awaiting trial or sentencing.

The M.D.C., among the nation’s biggest federal prisons, carries a checkered past, marred by controversy and claims of poor administration.

Several officers at the prison were taken into custody and accused of sexual misconduct against detainees in 2017, leading to subsequent convictions. In May 2018, a former M.D.C. lieutenant, Eugenio Perez, was found guilty regarding a female inmate whom prosecutors stated he coerced into oral sex. Separately, a jury determined that former lieutenant Carlos Richard Martinez was guilty of multiple rapes of a female inmate that January. Several months before that, former corrections officer Armando Moronta admitted to sexually assaulting three female inmates.

Allegations of hazardous and unclean environments at the prison have also been made by reports and lawyers. For example, in late January 2019, more than a thousand M.D.C. detainees were kept in icy cells when the prison experienced a loss of electricity and heating for a minimum of one week, as reported by The New York Times, referencing federal public defenders and the corrections officers’ union. One federal defender recounted being informed by an inmate that a guard recorded a temperature of 34 degrees in a housing unit, with individual cells being even colder.

At that time, the Bureau of Prisons recognized an electrical malfunction and attributed it to Con Edison. The utility company rejected this assertion, stating the failure originated within the prison’s own systems.

In a separate case, the lawyer for Joseph Elias, who admitted guilt to conspiracy to use fire for a felony and was confined at the prison for over 20 months, stated in May 2024 that his client received food with maggots in the M.D.C.’s special housing unit, and was given meals containing fish despite a known allergy.

During that year, two detainees died at the facility. In June 2024, Uriel Whyte was stabbed to death by two fellow inmates while awaiting trial on weapons charges, as per reports. A month afterwards, Edwin Cordero, who was imprisoned for assault violating his supervised release after a wire fraud sentence, was reportedly assaulted and stabbed in the heart by three inmates.

That September, a federal judge warned she would overturn the prison term of a 75-year-old man convicted of tax fraud if he were assigned to the M.D.C., opting instead for house arrest due to cited conditions at the Brooklyn jail.

The institution “is hell on earth for anyone unfortunate enough to live there,” criminal-defense lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Bederow told Business Insider after news emerged that Sean “Diddy” Combs would be moved to the M.D.C. that month.

In a statement last June, the Legal Aid Society characterized the jail as possessing a “documented history of violence, medical neglect, and human and civil rights violations.”

Despite the fatalities and allegations, the M.D.C. persists in housing hundreds of detainees, including some of the nation’s most notorious alleged criminals. The Venezuelan president and his wife now reside alongside Luigi Mangione, who is confronting state and federal charges for the December 2024 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, as current inhabitants of the infamous jail.

Another former Latin American head of state, ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, was also recently held there while awaiting trial on narcotics charges following his 2022 extradition. During his confinement, Hernández received advice from another notable inmate: Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the failed bitcoin exchange FTX. Hernández stayed at the jail until his conviction in March 2024, after which he was moved to a prison in West Virginia. President Donald Trump praised the former Honduran President last year—even while increasing pressure on Maduro regarding the Venezuelan leader’s alleged role in the narcotics trade.