Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn

The Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, also MDC Brooklyn, is a United States federal administrative detention facility in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States. It holds male and female inmates of all security levels. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. As of February 2026, 1,408 people were held in MDC Brooklyn. Most people held at MDC Brooklyn have pending cases in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. MDC Brooklyn also holds prisoners serving brief sentences. History MDC Brooklyn occupies land that was originally part of Bush Terminal (now Industry City), a historic intermodal shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing complex. The Federal Bureau of Prisons initially proposed converting two buildings at Industry City into a federal jail in 1988, due to overcrowding at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York. There was large opposition from members of the local community, who feared that traffic congestion in the area would rise. Critics feared that the facility, with its staff, inmates, visitors, and supply deliveries, would overburden neighborhood traffic and water and sewer systems. To make room for MDC Brooklyn, one of the original Bush Terminal loft buildings—Federal Building No. 1, formerly occupied by the United States Coast Guard—was demolished in a controlled explosion in August 1993. MDC Brooklyn opened in January 1994. It was built to hold 1,000 inmates awaiting arraignment or trial at the federal court in the Eastern District of New York. By 2019, according to The New York Times, it held 1,600 inmates. In November 1999, a second facility was opened next to the original complex to house inmates who have been sentenced and are awaiting transfer to a permanent facility. This brought the total number of inmates to close to 3,000 and made MDC Brooklyn the largest detention center in the United States. In June 2015, a lawsuit filed in 2002 against high-ranking officials of George W. Bush's presidential administration, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former F.B.I. Director Robert S. Mueller III, brought by eight, mostly Muslim immigrant detainees, was allowed to go forward by a three-judge federal panel. It alleged that the plaintiffs were subject to chronic arbitrary abuses including beatings, strip searches and solitary confinement. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision included one dissent. In 2019, former warden Cameron Lindsay said, "The M.D.C. was one of the most troubled, if not the most troubled facility in the Bureau of Prisons." In September 2024, the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that federal defendants entering the prison system after sentencing will no longer be sent to MDC Brooklyn. This decision is possibly related to a previous ruling by a Federal Court judge who threatened to vacate a man's sentence if he was sent to MDC Brooklyn due to the "dangerous, barbaric conditions" of the jail. The same month, rapper and record producer Sean "Diddy" Combs was incarcerated at the prison's Special Housing Unit. In early 2026, an investigation by Rolling Stone revealed the institution imposes extended lockdowns, offers inadequate medical care, and subjects inmates to poor conditions including that some inmates go weeks without seeing the sky. One of Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers said that MDC Brooklyn had mistreated Maxwell during her time there. She was searched 1,400 times, even though no contraband was ever found. Despite Maxwell saying she was not suicidal, she had a flashlight shone when she was supposed to be sleeping every 15 minutes, therefore disrupting her sleep. Furthermore, Maxwell's food was heated in a container that was not for microwave use, causing things like the food blending into the plastic. Immigration detention 2001–2002 investigative detention During the sweeping investigation of non-citizens that followed the September 11 attacks, the United States government detained 762 foreign nationals, 60% of them in the New York City metropolitan area. 84 detainees were held at the Metropolitan Detention Center between September 14, 2001, and August 27, 2002. Those detained in the investigation were placed in the highly isolated Secure Housing Unit, limited to a single outside phone call per month, one call with lawyers per week, and subjected to what the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General determined was "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse." 2025 – ICE facility The Metropolitan Detention Center began holding immigrant men detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in June 2025 under a February 6, 2025, agreement between ICE and the US Bureau of Prisons. The ICE presence in the prison expanded to a second cell block in February 2026. Notable incidents Extraordinary rendition In September 2006, Canadian engineer Maher Arar was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport while flying home from a vacation in Tunisia and held for two weeks in solitary confinement at MDC Brooklyn. The US government suspected him of being a member of Al Qaeda and deported him, not to Canada, his current home and the passport on which he was travelling, but to Syria. He was detained in Syria for almost a year, during which time he was tortured by Syrian authorities, according to the findings of a commission of inquiry ordered by the Canadian government, until his release to Canada. The Syrian government later stated that Arar was "completely innocent." Inmate assault On June 29, 2009, Ronald Atkinson (62416–054), an inmate at MDC Brooklyn who had been arrested in connection with six bank robberies 12 days earlier, committed an allegedly unprovoked assault on a correctional officer, repeatedly punching him in the head until he was restrained by correctional officers. The officer, whom the Bureau of Prisons did not identify, suffered a broken nose, broken facial bones, a fractured eye socket, a laceration requiring stitches, and two slipped discs in his neck. An 18-year veteran of the Bureau of Prisons, the officer was forced to retire as a result of his injuries. Atkinson was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for the bank robberies. On July 19, 2013, he was sentenced to an additional 12 years in prison for the assault. Currently held at USP Coleman I in Sumter County, Florida, Atkinson is scheduled for release in 2032. Ronell Wilson On February 5, 2013, New York media outlets reported that Nancy Gonzalez, a former federal correction officer, had engaged in a sexual relationship with Ronell Wilson, an inmate at MDC Brooklyn, and that Gonzalez was carrying Wilson's child. Wilson, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 for the 2003 murders of NYPD Detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin, was awaiting a resentencing hearing in Brooklyn federal court after his original death sentence was overturned in 2010, when he began a relationship with Gonzalez. Gonzalez was terminated and arraigned in federal court on charges of sexual abuse of a person in custody, because an inmate cannot legally consent to sex. Wilson was subsequently transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Gonzalez pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual abuse of a ward on July 3, 2013. Gonzalez was sentenced to a year and a day by Federal Judge Brian Cogan on February 9, 2014. Cogan remarked, "[Gonzalez has] severe emotional dysfunction". Wilson was sentenced to death again on September 10, 2013. During the hearing, US District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis called for a formal investigation by the Justice Department's inspector general into the management of MDC Brooklyn, where, he said, Mr. Wilson was "permitted to treat the MDC as his own private fiefdom." Winter 2019 heat and power outages In January and February 2019, over 1,600 inmates were kept with little to no heat and power for a week during the January 2019 North American cold wave. Numerous inmates reported ill health and were seen banging on windows for help. Activists and some New York officials sought to improve conditions. The incident started on the weekend of January 26–27 with a power outage. A faulty electrical panel was repaired but caught fire the next day. Power was restored on the evening of February 3, and the Department of Justice planned to investigate the incident. Inmates, family members, and lawyers have said that those inmates involved in protesting these harsh conditions through non-violent disobedience and hunger strikes faced draconian reprisals from jail staff, including being pepper-sprayed, subjected to solitary confinement, and having toilets shut off. According to a report in The Intercept: On all three of those housing units where men collectively refused food, jail staff shut off the valves to the toilets in all of the cells, according to accounts relayed to lawyers. Confined to their cells on lockdown, deprived of light, the men on these units now found themselves shivering on their bunks with their heads inches from toilet bowls nearly overflowing with festering feces. Notable current inmates Notable former inmates See also List of U.S. federal prisons Federal Bureau of Prisons Incarceration in the United States Notes References External links MDC Brooklyn Admission and Orientation Manual Prison Information