US lawyers have described it as "hell on earth," and even judges have refused to send convicts there. This is the prison in Brooklyn where Nicolas Maduro is being held.

Hours after being captured in Caracas by US military personnel, in the midst of an unprecedented military operation in recent decades in Latin America, the leader was transported by air to the USS Iwo Jima, then to the Guantanamo Naval Base (Cuba), and finally, on another plane, to New York.

“Good night is how you say 'buenas noche,' right? Good night! Happy New “Year!” Maduro can be heard saying in one of the first videos recorded upon his arrival in the Big Apple, as he walks handcuffed and escorted by two anti-narcotics agents, dressed in a sports jacket, with a black cap on his head and wearing sandals with socks.

The successor of the late Hugo Chavez was taken by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) headquarters before being locked in a cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC). in Brooklyn, where he is expected to remain while facing drug trafficking and narcoterrorism charges brought against him by the US justice system.

Cilia Flores, the president's wife, was also imprisoned in the same facility.

Below, we tell you what this prison is like and which other well-known prisoners have been inside its cells.

A Vertical Prison

The MDC where Maduro is being held is a multi-story concrete and steel behemoth located in the Brooklyn borough, a few meters from the Port of New York and about five kilometers from Fifth Avenue, Central Park, and other renowned city attractions.

The prison, inaugurated in the early 1990s with the purpose of combating the prison overcrowding that plagued the city, It is located on the site of former facilities for the storage and distribution of goods arriving on or departing from ships docking at the maritime terminal. Although its primary purpose is to house male and female inmates awaiting trial in Manhattan and Brooklyn courts,the MDC is also used to incarcerate offenders serving short-term sentences, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) website. It is currently the only facility the BOP operates in New York, as the agency closed a similar prison it managed in Manhattan in 2021. This occurred after the suicide there in 2019, under strange circumstances, of American businessman Jeffrey Epstein, accused of prostitution and human trafficking. The penitentiary is located between the prosecutor's offices and two federal courts, and has internal corridors connecting them, allowing for the transfer of defendants without public exposure. The complex is surrounded by steel barricades and cameras capable of capturing images from a great distance. And in recent hours, external security has been reinforced. Despite its vertical design, the center has areas for outdoor sports, as well as medical units and even a library, reported the American public television network (PBS). Although there is no official information, local and international media claim that the cells are only a few meters long and that inmates spend most of the day in them. “Hell on Earth”

Problems such as overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and violence that plague many Latin American prisons, including Venezuelan detention centers, are also common at the Brooklyn MDC.

Built to house 1,000 inmates, the MDC held 1,600 in 2019, according to media reports. It currently has 1,336 inmates, according to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) website.

Furthermore, in recent years the prison has also operated with only 55% of its staff, the Associated Press reported in November 2024, citing court documents.

The combination of overcrowding and understaffing is one of the reasons for the fights and frequent acts of violence that occur in the prison.

And as if the above weren't enough, the building's physical conditions are also far from ideal.

This became clear in 2019, when a power outage left inmates without heat for several days in the middle of winter. “The conditions at the MDC are unacceptable and inhumane.” “Being incarcerated should not entail the denial of human rights,” declared then-New York Attorney General Letitia James, who sued the federal government over the prison's deplorable condition. “For their part, lawyers like Edwin Cordero have described the prison as the very embodiment of “hell on Earth.” One of Cordero's clients, Uriel Whyte, was stabbed to death by other inmates in June 2024, CNN reported. This opinion was supported by David Patton, former director of the Federal Defenders of New York, who told a local news outlet that the prison's problems range "from a lack of medical care to serious sanitation failures, to the presence of worms in the food and violence."The prison's conditions would explain why at least four inmate suicides have been reported between 2021 and 2024. Judges are also dissatisfied with the state of the penitentiary, and proof of this is that some have decided not to send any more convicts there. One of them was District Judge Gary Brown, who in August 2024 stated that he would overturn the nine-month prison sentence he imposed on a 75-year-old man convicted of fraud. prosecutor, and would place him under house arrest if the BOP sent him to the Brooklyn MDC.

“These incidents (referring to the fights) demonstrate a deplorable lack of supervision, a disturbance of public order, and an atmosphere of anarchy that constitutes unacceptable, reprehensible, and deadly management,” Brown stated, according to the London newspaper The Independent.

Corruption scandals have also brought the prison to the front pages. On March 6, 2025, the Department of Justice. announced the prosecution of 25 people—including inmates and former prison officials—in 12 separate cases involving violence and smuggling. Other Famous Guests: Despite the poor conditions at the Brooklyn prison, it has been chosen by US authorities to house prominent prisoners. Maduro, for example, is not the first Latin American politician to end up in a jail cell. Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez spent more than three years incarcerated at the MDC until last June, when he was transferred to another penitentiary after being sentenced by a federal court to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking. Remarkably, Trump pardoned him last December.

Mexico's former Secretary of Public Security, Genaro Garcia Luna, also spent time in one of the cells of the New York prison.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, one of the most notorious Mexican drug traffickers, was also there, as was Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, One of the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel remains in that building pending drug trial trafficking.

Other famous inmates have included historical figures in organized crime such as John Gotti and members of Al Qaeda who were arrested after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Even the rapper and music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs spent a few months incarcerated at the MDC, but once he was sentenced to four years in prison for abusing women for more than a decade, he was transferred to another facility in New Jersey.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's associate and former partner; Sam Bankman-Fried, former founder of the failed cryptocurrency platform FTX, and Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer sentenced to three years for financial crimes, are among the other high-profile inmates at MDC.

This news has been tken from authentic news syndicates and agencies and only the wordings has been changed keeping the menaing intact. We have not done personal research yet and do not guarantee the complete genuinity and request you to verify from other sources too.