After the U.S. military ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in the middle of the night Saturday — marking the most aggressive American act of regime change since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — officials detained him in a New York City federal lock-up.
Hours after the stunning military operation, President Donald Trump announced he was “going to run” Venezuela until a transition of power took place.
Maduro is facing federal charges for running a “corrupt, illegitimate government” and promoting drug-trafficking that prosecutors allege have flooded the United States with thousands of tons of cocaine. He is being detained along with his wife, Cilia Flores, at the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The facility has a history of abhorrent conditions and a track record of detaining high-profile defendants.
What is the Metropolitan Detention Center?
Located in a former Navy warehouse in Sunset Park, the Metropolitan Detention Center, also known as M.D.C., opened in the 1990s and is now New York City’s only federal detention facility. Officials closed the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan after security issues came to light following alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s death by suicide there in 2019.
About 1,300 people are currently being detained at M.D.C., including recent arrestees by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The facility is run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
M.D.C. is infamous for appalling conditions, severe staffing shortages and longstanding violence. In 2019, there was a weeklong power outage. In 2024, two prisoners were killed there by other inmates. At least four other inmates have died by suicide in the past few years. At least 17 have died in total since 2020.
Staffers have been charged in recent years for allegedly accepting bribes and facilitating contraband, and 23 prisoners in 2025 were charged with crimes ranging from weapons smuggling to a stabbing.
Who else is jailed there?
Maduro is not the first president of a foreign country to be jailed at M.D.C. In 2022, former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández was arrested and sentenced to 45 years in prison for accepting bribes from drug traffickers so they could move 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S.
Trump pardoned and freed Hernández in December.
Hip-hop music magnate Sean “Diddy” Combs was jailed at M.D.C. after being sentenced on prostitution-related charges in the fall of 2024. He is now serving a 4-year sentence at a federal prison in New Jersey. R&B musician R. Kelly was jailed at M.D.C. while awaiting trial on allegations of sexually abusing young fans, including minors. A federal jury convicted Kelly and he is serving a 30-year sentence at a federal prison in North Carolina.
Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, was jailed at M.D.C. in 2020. She complained about her treatment there, claiming officers interrupted her sleep by flashing a light into her cell every 15 minutes. She was transferred to a low-security federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida before being sent to a federal prison camp in Texas.
Other detainees at M.D.C. include Luigi Mangione, who is currently awaiting trial there for the alleged fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in December 2024. The disgraced cryptocurrency founder Sam Bankman-Fried, was also jailed at M.D.C. for allegedly stealing at least $10 billion from customers and investors. He has since been convicted and is serving a 25-year federal sentence in Southern California.
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the alleged kingpin of Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa drug cartel, is currently being detained at M.D.C.
What charges does Maduro face?
Maduro his wife, son and three others, faces weapons and drug charges. The U.S. government is accusing him of allowing “cocaine-fueled corruption to flourish for his own benefit, for the benefit of members of his ruling regime, and for the benefit of his family members,” according to an unsealed indictment.
Federal officials allege he provided police coverage and “logistical support” to powerful cartels in the region, helping the Sinaloa Cartel and the Tren de Aragua gang traffic drugs through Venezuela. But a classified assessment by U.S. intelligence released last year found no coordination between Tren de Aragua and Maduro’s government.
Maduro was also indicted by federal prosecutors in 2020 during Trump’s first term for allegedly flooding the U.S. with cocaine and using drug trafficking as a “weapon against America.”
Federal prosecutors indicted him again just before Christmas on four counts: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns, among others.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.