Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn

The Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn (MDC Brooklyn) is a federal administrative detention facility operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. It is the primary pre-trial holding facility for defendants with cases in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) and the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). As of early 2026, it holds roughly 1,400 people—men and women of all security classifications—and has become one of the most scrutinized jails in the United States, attracting both international headlines for its parade of famous detainees and sustained criticism from federal judges, lawyers, and civil rights organizations for its deteriorating conditions.

Facility

Location and Physical Description

MDC Brooklyn sits at 80 29th Street on the industrial waterfront of Sunset Park, a working-class neighborhood in southwestern Brooklyn. The surrounding area is unglamorous by any measure: a Costco warehouse and a recycling facility are nearby neighbors. The building's exterior offers little hint of what's inside—it resembles the kind of anonymous federal infrastructure that blends into the shoreline. There's almost no natural light to speak of inside, a point that former detainees mention almost immediately when describing the place. "You're not breathing fresh air," one former inmate told Rolling Stone. "You don't see the sun."

The facility is managed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice.

Layout and Units

MDC Brooklyn consists of two separate buildings. The larger of the two—the West Building—houses the general male population. It's the older structure, the one that originally opened in January 1994. Units inside typically hold about 120 people in 60-cell configurations, with standard cells measuring roughly eight by ten feet and metal bunk beds bolted to the walls. Recreation is minimal: a room about the size of a high school gymnasium, with bolted-down tables, a chess set, and little else.

The East Building, added in November 1999, houses female inmates and also contains the facility's most unusual unit: 4 North, located on the fourth floor.

4 North

4 North is a dormitory-style housing unit reserved for a small group of high-profile detainees—typically those whose cases draw national or international attention, who face genuine safety risks in general population, or who are cooperating witnesses needing protection. It's not formally a separate classification; the Bureau of Prisons considers it part of general population. But in practice it operates almost entirely on its own.

The unit is roughly the size of a basketball court. Inmates sleep in dormitory-style bunk beds arranged in an open floor plan, not in individual cells. There are no pillows—a consistent detail that former detainees mention, apparently because it surprises people who assume high-profile inmates receive special comforts. They don't. Shower and toilet areas offer minimal privacy. Meals are wheeled in on carts rather than served in a common cafeteria. The unit has an attached legal work room where inmates can meet with their attorneys, which is one of its few genuine advantages over the general population.

Daily life is structured around multiple mandatory counts—formal headcounts conducted by staff throughout the day. Beyond those, inmates can read, exercise within the unit, or use tablets for phone calls. Phone access is capped at 500 minutes per month, with individual calls limited to 15 minutes and a mandatory one-hour wait between calls.

Prison consultant Sam Mangel, who has advised clients at MDC, described the unit's social dynamics to several outlets covering Nicolás Maduro's detention there in early 2026. The small population creates its own pressures. There's no easy anonymity—roughly 18 to 20 people share the same open space indefinitely, and tensions between co-defendants, cooperators, and defendants with competing legal interests can simmer under the surface.

Operations

Population and Jurisdiction

MDC Brooklyn serves as the primary pre-trial detention facility for federal defendants facing charges in both the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York—the two busiest federal courts in the country. The EDNY, headquartered across the river in downtown Brooklyn, handles cases ranging from drug trafficking to terrorism. The SDNY, based in Manhattan, is responsible for some of the highest-profile prosecutions in U.S. history.

The facility holds roughly 1,300 to 1,600 people at any given time—the population fluctuates with enforcement cycles, case backlogs, and periodic transfers. As of February 2026, the official count was 1,408. Men make up the large majority; women are housed separately in the East Building. The facility also holds some inmates who have already been sentenced but are waiting for transfer to their designated federal prison, and since June 2025 has housed Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees under an agreement with the Trump administration.

Daily Operations

The typical day inside MDC follows a rigid schedule. Lights-on comes at 6 a.m. Mandatory counts happen multiple times daily, and inmates are required to be at their bunks or in their assigned areas during counts. Meals are served at fixed times—in 4 North, food is wheeled directly to the unit; in general population, inmates are called to the cafeteria by unit. Phone access, commissary purchases, and visitation happen on restricted schedules that vary by housing unit.

Lockdowns—periods when inmates are confined to their cells or units and normal activities are suspended—have become a chronic feature of life at MDC. One detainee documented being locked down for 137 out of 245 days of incarceration. During lockdowns, inmates are typically allowed out for just 45 minutes every three days to shower and make phone calls. The causes vary: short-staffing, security incidents, administrative decisions. Explanations are rarely provided.

History

MDC Brooklyn's origins go back to 1988, when the Federal Bureau of Prisons proposed converting existing buildings at what was then called Bush Terminal—now Industry City—into a federal jail. The impetus was overcrowding at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York (MCC), the federal jail in lower Manhattan. Community opposition in Sunset Park centered on traffic and infrastructure concerns, but the project moved forward. Federal Building No. 1 at the site was demolished in a controlled explosion in August 1993, clearing the way for the new facility.

The West Building opened in January 1994, designed to hold 1,000 inmates. A second building—the East Building—opened in November 1999, dramatically expanding the facility's capacity. At the time of its expansion, MDC Brooklyn became the largest federal detention center in the United States, with a combined population approaching 3,000.

In the months following the September 11, 2001 attacks, MDC Brooklyn held 84 people detained by the federal government as part of the post-9/11 mass arrests of Muslim men. The Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General later documented a "pattern of physical and verbal abuse" against detainees held in the Secure Housing Unit during this period.

Conditions and Controversies

2019 Power Outage

The winter of 2019 produced MDC Brooklyn's most notorious single incident. On January 27, an electrical fire broke out in the West Building, triggering a power outage that lasted an entire week—until February 3. The timing was brutal: New York City was in the grip of a polar vortex, with temperatures dropping into the single digits. More than 1,600 inmates were left without adequate heat, lighting, hot food, or working electrical outlets. People who relied on CPAP machines for sleep apnea couldn't use them for six days because in-cell outlets were dead and staff didn't arrange alternatives.

The Bureau of Prisons initially blamed the fire. A federal watchdog investigation released in September 2019 told a different story: the outage was "the result of the facility's lack of proper equipment to continuously monitor temperatures, which BOP was aware of and had not addressed." The crisis, in other words, wasn't a fluke—it was the predictable result of long-standing neglect.

During the outage, the facility suspended all social and legal visits, cutting inmates off from family and lawyers alike. Inmates who protested conditions were reportedly met with pepper spray and solitary confinement. Protests spread outside too: community members and advocates gathered on the streets around MDC, shining lights and shouting to the inmates inside.

Class action litigation—Scott v. Quay—followed. The case was certified as a class action in 2022. By 2024, the Bureau of Prisons agreed to a settlement worth approximately $10 million, paying $8,750 to each of nearly 1,000 claimants for experiencing the inhumane conditions, with an additional $8,750 for 69 people with untreated medical conditions during the outage.

Overcrowding and Safety Concerns

Chronic understaffing has shadowed MDC Brooklyn for years. As of January 2024, the facility was operating at roughly 55% of full correctional officer staffing—less than 300 officers covering a population exceeding 1,600. By September 2024, a Bureau of Prisons push to recruit and retain staff raised that figure to about 70%, bringing the total employee count to 469—but with 157 positions still vacant.

The consequences show up in the statistics. Since 2020, 17 people have died at MDC Brooklyn. In a single five-month stretch in 2024, the facility saw two apparent homicides, two serious stabbings, and an assault that left a detainee with a fractured eye socket. Two stabbing deaths in August 2024 led to federal charges against nine other inmates for the killings and related assaults.

Violence and lockdowns are intertwined. When staff shortages force units into lockdown, inmates who are incompatible—rival gang members, co-defendants in the same case, people with personal conflicts—end up locked in small cells together for extended periods. The pressure builds. Some inmates are kept in double-celled conditions for weeks without any outdoor exercise or program access.

Federal judges have taken notice. Multiple district court judges in both the Eastern and Southern Districts have cited MDC's conditions as grounds for reducing sentences, or refused to order pre-trial detention there at all. In September 2024, the Bureau of Prisons announced it would no longer transfer newly sentenced inmates to MDC Brooklyn, citing what federal court rulings had called "dangerous, barbaric conditions."

Medical care has drawn its own criticism. As of January 2025, the facility of more than 1,600 people had two doctors and one physician's assistant on staff. Call buttons had been non-functional for four years in some units. In June 2024, a diabetic inmate lost consciousness in his unit—no officers were present, and it was a fellow detainee who provided first aid until help arrived. A federal judge rebuked MDC staff in May 2024 for denying a post-appendectomy patient their prescribed medication and then lying about it in court.

Infrastructure throughout the facility is in poor shape. Cell sink water frequently runs brown. Hot water fails regularly. Showers in 100-person units number two or fewer working fixtures. Videos obtained by advocates have shown cockroaches on food trays, mold in shower areas, and broken lighting.

Food Safety

Food quality at MDC Brooklyn has been a persistent complaint, but concerns sharpened significantly in 2024 and 2025. Federal Defenders of New York collected ten separate accounts from detainees who reported finding maggots in their meat or beans. One inmate, Joseph Elias, raised the issue in court filings after being served maggot-infested beans in the Special Housing Unit.

After the complaints became public, Bureau of Prisons officials said they evaluated all food at the facility and found no maggots. They later acknowledged finding a single bag from a particular food manufacturer that contained weevils and said all beans from that manufacturer had been removed. Defense attorneys and advocacy organizations said the acknowledgment, however narrow, confirmed the core complaint.

Photos of maggot-infested food at the facility circulated in the press in 2025. As recently as the time of Nicolás Maduro's arrival in early 2026, published reporting cited maggots in MDC food as a 2025 occurrence.

COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic hit MDC Brooklyn's population hard. In March 2020, a class action lawsuit filed by detainees and backed by civil rights firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady sought the release of approximately 540 medically vulnerable inmates and the appointment of a special master to oversee conditions improvements. U.S. District Judge Rachel Kovner denied the request for preliminary injunctive relief, finding "cautious optimism" in the facility's early pandemic response.

Later findings were less reassuring. A prison health expert hired as part of the litigation reported the facility was "not prepared to effectively contain any outbreak of COVID-19." Testing was minimal—as of early May 2020, only 15 of roughly 1,700 inmates had been tested, with six positive results. Nursing staff sometimes responded to sick-call requests by taking temperature readings and nothing more. In one instance, inmates with asthma attacks reported that nurses didn't listen to their lungs or assess their breathing.

Judge Kovner drew an adverse inference against MDC after determining that the facility had destroyed paper sick-call slips—its only records of medical requests—after the lawsuit was filed. The court found those records would have shown a higher volume of symptom reports during the peak weeks of the New York outbreak in April 2020.

Legal Access

A separate thread of litigation has focused on MDC Brooklyn's record of denying attorneys access to their clients. Federal Defenders of New York v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, filed in 2019 and still in mediation as of 2020, challenged the facility's patterns of refusing or delaying lawyer visits. Attorneys representing high-profile clients at MDC have described waiting two to three hours for access, only to be turned away. Defense attorneys for Juan Orlando Hernández reported difficulty reaching him at all in the weeks after his April 2022 extradition.

During lockdowns—which in some units constitute a majority of incarceration time—legal visits, law library access, and discovery review are suspended entirely. Criminal defense attorneys practicing in EDNY and SDNY have noted that the conditions affect trial preparation in concrete ways: clients arrive at court hearings having had little ability to review documents, and meetings with lawyers focus on the immediate conditions rather than case strategy.

Notable Detainees

MDC Brooklyn holds pre-trial detainees from two of the busiest and highest-profile federal court districts in the country. The result is an inmate roster that has, over the years, included heads of state, entertainment executives, drug cartel bosses, financial fraudsters, and accused murderers.

Detainee	Charges / Case	Period at MDC
Nicolás Maduro	Drug trafficking, narco-terrorism (SDNY)	January 2026–present
Luigi Mangione	Murder, federal murder charges (SDNY)	December 2024–present
Sean Combs	Sex trafficking, racketeering, transportation to engage in prostitution (SDNY)	September 2024–present
Sam Bankman-Fried	Securities fraud, wire fraud, FTX collapse (SDNY)	August 2023–2024 (post-conviction, awaiting transfer)
Juan Orlando Hernández	Drug trafficking, firearms charges (SDNY)	April 2022–2024
Tekashi 6ix9ine (Daniel Hernandez)	Racketeering, parole violations	2019; January 2026
Ghislaine Maxwell	Sex trafficking, perjury (SDNY)	July 2020–2021
R. Kelly	Federal sex trafficking, racketeering (EDNY/SDNY)	2019–2021
Martin Shkreli	Securities fraud (EDNY)	2015–2016
Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán	Drug trafficking (EDNY)	2017–2019
Michael Cohen	Campaign finance violations, perjury	2018 (brief stay)
Al Sharpton	Trespass (civil disobedience protest, Vieques)	2001

4 North: The High-Profile Unit

Several of MDC Brooklyn's most-watched detainees have been housed in the 4 North dormitory rather than general population cells. Sean Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried shared the unit in late 2024—a fact that became the subject of widespread media coverage when Bankman-Fried told reporters that Combs had been "kind to people in the unit." R. Kelly was previously housed in 4 North before his conviction. Ghislaine Maxwell and Juan Orlando Hernández also spent time in the unit's general vicinity within the East Building during their pre-trial periods.

Nicolás Maduro, the former Venezuelan president extradited to the United States in early 2026 on narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges, arrived at MDC in January 2026. His wife, Cilia Flores, who faces related charges, was housed separately in the East Building's female section. Prison consultant Sam Mangel described Maduro's situation to CNN: "It's hell on earth. It is in a state of utter disrepair, understaffed and under-resourced. There is very little HVAC, very little heating. Every inmate gets one wool blanket and a very thin two-inch mattress pillow combination on a metal slab." Reports from Venezuelan government officials in March 2026 indicated that Maduro was held in conditions amounting to solitary confinement and had been shouting at night that he had been kidnapped.

Luigi Mangione, charged with the December 2024 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was transferred to MDC Brooklyn in December 2024 following his extradition from Pennsylvania and his initial federal court appearance. Tekashi 6ix9ine (Daniel Hernandez), previously incarcerated at MDC in 2019, returned in January 2026 to serve a sentence related to parole violations. Media reports noted that 6ix9ine later showed off a SpongeBob toy that Maduro had signed for him while both were at the facility.

Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the Sinaloa cartel boss, spent more than two years in isolation at MDC Brooklyn after his second extradition to the United States, before being transferred in 2019 to ADX Florence in Colorado—the federal "supermax."

Legal Proceedings and Court Oversight

MDC Brooklyn has been the subject of a number of significant federal lawsuits and judicial rulings that have shaped conditions at the facility, though reform has been slow and contested.

The Scott v. Quay class action, filed February 22, 2019, arose directly from the winter power outage. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York certified the class in May 2022, covering all people confined in the West Building from January 27 through February 3, 2019. The case settled in 2024 for approximately $10 million.

Federal Defenders of New York, Inc. v. Federal Bureau of Prisons challenged the facility's systematic denial of attorney access. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the case to proceed in 2020 after the district court had dismissed it; the matter remained in mediation as of the time of reporting.

Chunn v. Edge was a COVID-era class action filed in March 2020 seeking release of vulnerable detainees. Judge Kovner's handling of the case—including findings of evidence spoliation against MDC officials—drew significant attention.

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed an amicus brief in 2019 supporting litigation over MDC conditions, one of a series of interventions by state officials and advocacy organizations.

Multiple district court judges in EDNY and SDNY have, in individual criminal cases, cited MDC conditions as a downward departure basis at sentencing or declined to order pre-trial detention at the facility. In at least one January 2024 ruling, a judge cited the facility's conditions directly in a sentencing decision.

In the Media

MDC Brooklyn's combination of terrible conditions and high-profile detainees has made it a recurring subject of journalism.

The New Yorker published a detailed look at the facility in April 2026 under the headline "What Nicolás Maduro's Life Is Like in a Notorious Brooklyn Jail," drawing on the Maduro detention to examine the facility's physical layout, daily operations, and chronic problems. The piece described 4 North in detail—its dormitory bunks, lack of pillows, attached legal work room, and meal-cart delivery system—and quoted Sam Mangel extensively on conditions throughout the facility.

The Appeal and Solitary Watch published a joint investigation in 2025 on lockdown conditions at MDC, documenting specific statistics on the number of days detainees spent locked down, the medical emergencies that occurred during lockdowns, and the effect on trial preparation.

The 2019 power outage drew widespread attention from national and local media, with protests outside the facility documented by outlets including the New York Times, NBC News, and local television stations.

See Also

• Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York
• Federal Bureau of Prisons
• Sean Combs
• Sam Bankman-Fried
• Nicolás Maduro
• Luigi Mangione
• Ghislaine Maxwell
• R. Kelly
• Juan Orlando Hernández
• Joaquín Guzmán
• Martin Shkreli
• Tekashi 6ix9ine