Deadly stabbings, “barbaric” living conditions and maggots in the food: this is the state of the notorious New York City prison that ousted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro calls home.
Maduro was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on Saturday night, just hours after the U.S. military attack on his country, and will stay there until he faces trial on several charges, including Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy
It’s a facility that is no stranger to famous faces, having previously housed Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, Fyre Festival fraudster Billy McFarland and rapper R Kelly, who was found guilty of child sexual abuse.
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.”
A still image from video posted by the White House’s Rapid Response 47 account on X.com, which originated from the @PaulDMauro account, shows Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro being walked in custody down a hallway at the offices of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in New York City, U.S., January 3, 2026 (@RapidResponse47/Handout via REUTERS)MDC has been plagued by violence, chronic understaffing, a lack of medical care and unsanitary conditions for some time.
In 2024, an inmate, Uriel Whyte, was stabbed to death 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.”
(AP)“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 food, broken lights and mold in the showers.
The Metropolitan Detention Center is considered to be one of the toughest facilities in the US (YUKI IWAMURA/AFP via Getty Images)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.
Federal law enforcement personnel stand watch outside the Metropolitan Detention Center as they await the arrival of captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in New York (AP)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.
