The notorious MDC Brooklyn federal jail has started taking in ICE detainees, with more than 100 now housed in the Sunset Park lockup that also houses Sean “Diddy” Combs and alleged healthcare CEO-killer Luigi Mangione, sources tell the Daily News.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which had previously agreed to house immigrant detainees in five federal facilities, has expanded that number to eight, including MDC Brooklyn, according to an interagency agreement first reported by the Miami Herald.
Sources tell The News that between 100 and 120 Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees have already been placed in the jail’s “East Building,” and for the most part aren’t mingling with pretrial inmates accused of dangerous crimes.
Currently, just two floors of that building house inmates. Diddy is held in the facility, as well as the jail’s female population and “work cadre” inmates who are serving short sentences.
In a statement Wednesday, Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Emery Nelson confirmed the agency is assisting ICE by housing detainees.
“The BOP has entered an interagency agreement that allows ICE to place detainees in eight BOP facilities,” Nelson said. “These facilities include FDC Miami, FCI Atlanta, FCI Leavenworth, FDC Philadelphia, FCI Berlin, FDC Honolulu, FCI Lewisburg and MDC Brooklyn. For privacy, safety and security reasons, we do not comment on the legal status of an individual, nor do we specify the legal status of individuals assigned to any particular facility, including specific numbers of detainees.”
Federal judges across the city have decried the conditions at MDC Brooklyn as “barbaric” and “inhumane” and its staff as “contemptuous of human life and dignity,” and will often reduce defendants’ sentences to account for the conditions they endure pretrial.
Last year, the jail saw a string of violent attacks, including two murders over just six weeks, and a caught-on-video assault that showed a trio of MS-13 attackers stabbing a fellow gang member for 37 seconds before a lone correction officer arrived to stop them.
The chronically understaffed MDC in recent years has seen an eight-day blackout during a polar vortex, constant lockdowns, a laundry list of medical mistreatment episodes and botched cancer diagnoses and inmate complaints of maggot-infested food.
“Increasing the population of MDC Brooklyn by detaining immigrants there is a terrible idea, given MDC’s long-standing issues with under-staffing, lack of adequate medical care, and impaired access to counsel,” said Deirdre von Dornum of the Federal Defenders. “In the brief period since ICE has begun housing immigrants at MDC, lockdowns have reportedly increased, negatively impacting conditions of confinement for all who are held there.”
When asked if the jail would be adding staff to handle the ICE detainees, Nelson said, “We have sufficient staff at all of the facilities listed in the interagency agreement to accomplish the mission at hand.”
ICE representatives did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
“MDC is a jail that no human being should be held in. It’s a horrific place. So that’s really upsetting. And I wish that it were surprising, but it’s not,” said Sophie Ellman-Golan, communications director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, of news that ICE detainees are being held at the infamous facility. Her group has been doing “court watch” shifts at immigration courts in lower Manhattan for the past few weeks.
The move comes as the Trump administration has directed ICE agents, who regularly cover their faces with masks and show no credentials, to ramp up efforts to round up immigrants in deportation raids across the country.
In New York City, ICE agents have detained immigrants as they show up for routine check-ins on their asylum claims, facing no criminal charges or other reason to believe they could be deported.
It’s not clear if ICE is sending New York-area detainees to MDC Brooklyn, or if they’re shuttling detainees from other parts of the country there.
On Tuesday, CBS News reported that ICE is holding nearly 59,000 detainees across the country, and nearly half of them have no criminal record.
“We wouldn’t need so many detention centers if the government would just admit that they were wrong in their depiction of immigrants,” said Power Malu, a New York City-based immigration advocate. “What happens when you mix good, law-abiding people in a facility known for its dangerous population, inhumane conditions and mistreatment of detainees? These non-criminals, non-public safety threats, will now need to be in survival mode to defend themselves from further abuse in these facilities. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
