Days after being captured in a Caracas safe house, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro finds himself in a far less hospitable environment: a Brooklyn jail where he will probably be confined to a cell 23 hours a day, conditions Sean “Diddy” Combs and Ghislaine Maxwell had called inhumane. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, face drug trafficking charges in the US after being captured in a dramatic overnight raid. They were transported to a US Navy ship, flown to the US and taken on Saturday night to the Metropolitan Detention Centre (MDC), Brooklyn.
The 63-year-old Maduro and his 69-year-old wife are due to appear in Manhattan federal court on Monday. Founded in 1994, MDC Brooklyn holds about 1,300 men and women and is the only jail for detainees awaiting federal trials in New York City. Past residents have included Maxwell and hip hop mogul Combs, and Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras who was convicted of drug trafficking charges before being pardoned in December by President Donald Trump.
Luigi Mangione, who pleaded not guilty to killing a UnitedHealth Group executive, is being housed there awaiting trial. The jail has been plagued by what inmates and defence lawyers have said are inhumane and unsanitary conditions. In 2019, some detainees at MDC Brooklyn were left in frigid cells after an electrical fire cut power and heat to the jail in the middle of winter.
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In 2024, two men were murdered by fellow inmates using makeshift weapons, according to the justice department, prompting a crackdown on violence and contraband smuggling at the facility. Maxwell, who was housed in MDC Brooklyn before her 2021 conviction for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, complained of raw sewage and vermin faeces in her cell. The US Bureau of Prisons, the division of the justice department that operates MDC Brooklyn, did not respond to a request for comment.
But the agency said in a September 2025 report that the jail’s conditions have improved because of increased staffing and other reforms. Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor who now practices criminal defence, said all prisoners at MDC Brooklyn face some risk of violence from other inmates. That risk is higher with someone such as Maduro, who could be targeted by a gang or a prisoner wanting to build a reputation through a “lone-wolf attack”, Epner said.
Cameron Lindsay, a former MDC Brooklyn warden who has served as an expert witness, said the Bureau of Prisons will probably keep Maduro separated from other inmates and carefully vet the staff who interact with him. “It’s conjecture on my part, but I would expect him to be put in a cell on a floor by himself,” Lindsay said. “This is obviously a super sensitive, high-security operation.” Lindsay said Maduro will probably be locked down 23 hours a day, with meals delivered to his cell and one hour allotted for exercise in a small caged area.
He will probably have access to a shower three times a week, Lindsay added. The former warden said Maduro’s wife would probably receive the same treatment. Combs, convicted in July on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, slept within a half metre of other inmates in a dorm-style room during his time at MDC Brooklyn.
The bathroom, with no door, was located in the same room. At one point during Combs’s incarceration, guards stopped someone trying to cut him with a makeshift knife, his lawyers said. There have been some signs of improving conditions at MDC Brooklyn in the past two years.
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