NEW YORK (AP) — The Brook­lyn jail hold­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro is a fa­cil­i­ty so trou­bled, some judges have re­fused to send peo­ple there even as it has housed such fa­mous in­mates as mu­sic stars R Kel­ly and Sean “Did­dy” Combs.

Opened in the ear­ly 1990s, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan De­ten­tion Cen­ter, or MDC Brook­lyn, cur­rent­ly hous­es about 1,300 in­mates.

It’s the rou­tine land­ing spot for peo­ple await­ing tri­al in fed­er­al courts in Man­hat­tan and Brook­lyn, hold­ing al­leged gang­sters and drug traf­fick­ers along­side some peo­ple ac­cused of white col­lar crimes.

A throng of Venezue­lan ex­pa­tri­ates, many draped in flags, gath­ered on the side­walks out­side the jail Sat­ur­day night to cel­e­brate Maduro’s cap­ture. The crowd cheered as the law en­force­ment mo­tor­cade be­lieved to be car­ry­ing the de­posed leader and his wife ar­rived at the jail.

Maduro is not the first pres­i­dent of a coun­try to be locked up there.

Juan Or­lan­do Hernán­dez, the for­mer pres­i­dent of Hon­duras, was im­pris­oned at MDC Brook­lyn while he was on tri­al for traf­fick­ing hun­dreds of tons of co­caine in­to the US Con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to 45 years in prison, Hernán­dez was par­doned and freed by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in De­cem­ber.

Cur­rent de­tainees in­clude the co-founder of Mex­i­co’s Sinaloa drug car­tel, Is­mael “El Mayo” Zam­ba­da Gar­cia, and Lui­gi Man­gione, who is ac­cused of killing the CEO of Unit­ed­Health­care. Past in­mates have in­clud­ed cryp­to mogul Sam Bankman-Fried and long­time Jef­frey Ep­stein as­so­ciate Ghis­laine Maxwell.

Lo­cat­ed next to a shop­ping mall in a wa­ter­front in­dus­tri­al area and with­in sight of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, the jail has been de­scribed, at its worst, as a “hell on earth” and an “on­go­ing tragedy.”

De­tainees and their lawyers have long com­plained about ram­pant vi­o­lence. Two pris­on­ers were killed by oth­er in­mates in 2024, and jail work­ers have been charged with ac­cept­ing bribes or pro­vid­ing con­tra­band.

Dur­ing the win­ter of 2019, a pow­er out­age plunged the fa­cil­i­ty and its in­mates in­to a cold dark­ness for a week.

Re­cent­ly, how­ev­er, the fed­er­al Bu­reau of Pris­ons says it has worked to im­prove con­di­tions.

The fa­cil­i­ty added cor­rec­tion­al and med­ical staff, rem­e­dy­ing more than 700 back­logged main­te­nance re­quests and an­swer­ing judges’ con­cerns. Im­prove­ments were al­so made to elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing lines, food ser­vice and heat­ing and air con­di­tion­ing sys­tems.

In ad­di­tion to the phys­i­cal up­grades, fed­er­al au­thor­i­ties have tried to crack down on crime in­side the lock­up. Last March, 23 in­mates were charged with of­fens­es rang­ing from smug­gling weapons in a Dori­tos bag to the stab­bing of a man con­vict­ed in the killing of hip-hop leg­end Jam Mas­ter Jay.

“In short, MDC Brook­lyn is safe for the in­mates and staff,” the Bu­reau of Pris­ons said in Sep­tem­ber. The in­mate pop­u­la­tion al­so de­creased from 1,580 as of Jan­u­ary 2024, which, it said, led to a “sub­stan­tial de­crease” in crime and con­tra­band.