Deposed socialist Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro arrived at a New York City jail Saturday night, hours after U.S. military forces captured him in Caracas, and awaits arraignment on four criminal charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracy.
A 12-second video posted to X late Saturday by the White House’s Rapid Response account shows Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents escorting an apparently handcuffed Maduro, wearing a hat and grasping a water bottle, through the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn (MDC Brooklyn). In the video, which the social media account captioned “Perp walked,” the ex-leader can be heard saying “good night” in both English and Spanish, as well as “happy new year” in English — apparently his first public remarks since being taken into U.S. custody. (RELATED: Scathing Indictment Claims Nicolás Maduro Orchestrated Drug-Fueled ‘Culture Of Corruption’ Which Plagued Entire Region)
Another one of MDC Brooklyn’s current inmates is Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024. The pretrial detention facility’s previous inmates notably include sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, and cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
Combs’s lawyers wrote that several courts “have recognized that the conditions at [MDC Brooklyn] are not fit for pre-trial detention” in a 2024 motion for bail. Maxwell also reportedly took issue with the jail’s accommodations during her stay, with the Jeffrey Epstein accomplice having complained of its allegedly abusive guards and plentiful rats.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a Saturday morning post to X, vowed Maduro “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
A 25-page indictment in the Southern District of New York unsealed later that morning details a host of criminal charges against Maduro and five co-defendants: his wife, son, two of his key political allies, and Tren de Aragua (TdA) leader Niño Guerrero. The charging document alleges the now-deposed dictator was at the head of a “culture of corruption in which powerful Venezuelan elites enrich themselves through drug trafficking and the protection of their partner drug traffickers.”
The indictment also accuses Maduro and his co-defendants of having “facilitated the empowerment and growth” of a host of criminal organizations, including TdA, Mexican drug cartels, and Colombian communist groups via “cocaine profits.”
Still, many prominent Democratic lawmakers condemned the Trump administration’s operation which removed the dictator — who was viewed as the illegitimate leader of Venezuela by the U.S. and most of its allies — with some calling it an “act of war.”
There were no American fatalities in the raid.
