BY RIVER FLEISCHNER
Every Tuesday at 6 pm for the last year, a vigil organized by Indivisible Brooklyn, a civic engagement group, and Good Shepherd Lutheran Church has met outside Metropolitan Detention Center to protest treatment of people detained inside.
A group of around 30 people gathered on the corner of Third Avenue and 29th Street in Brooklyn for the most recent of these vigils. Some held handmade signs aloft as organizers took turns speaking through a small PA system.
A strange, hollow tapping sound was all that could be heard in the spaces between remarks. Those present could see dozens of vague human forms behind narrow, scrummy plexiglass windows in the holding cells above as detainees registered their existence by tapping on the glass. In a wordless exchange, the protesters below raised their hands in greeting.
MDC is known for housing Nicholas Maduro, the deposed president of Venezuela; Diddy, the disgraced music mogul; and Luigi Mangioni, who has pleaded guilty to gunning down a United Healthcare CEO. Since June of 2025, MDC has added to that population people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on immigration charges.
Although they have been arrested on federal felony charges, these new detainees often lack a criminal background.
According to the website of representative Dan Goldman, Congressman for the 10th district in Brooklyn, who has visited the site several times to inspect conditions, many of these detainees do not have criminal records.
Protestors hope their sustained presence outside the center will help to draw attention to the detainees’ situation.
“A lot of the time, people don’t see what’s happening,” said Michael Flynn, 72, who has been attending the Tuesday vigil for over a year, “unless you actually see someone picked up.” Flynn says he wants to build people’s awareness. “It’s a horrible facility. It’s important that these places gain notoriety.”
According to the official Federal Bureau of Prisons website, MDC holds 1,222 detainees on immigration related charges. Organizers of the vigils believe that as many as 1,200 could be people arrested by ICE arrests. MDC has yet to release exact numbers.
The figures reflect an increase in ICE arrests over the past month, as the Federal operation known as Operation Rotten Apple rocked communities between July 27 and Aug 29. In a statement last week, Homeland Security Officials announced that 2,197 people were arrested across the state last month. According to North Country Public Radio, which serves the northernmost area of the state, these numbers are the highest since the Trump administration began its crackdown, and represent a 40% increasE since the previous month, according to findings by The Deportation Data Project.
The Department of Justice investigated MDC following the 2020 death of inmate Jamel Floyd. Advocates continue to call into question conditions inside the detention center.
Attempts to provide necessities to detainees remain ongoing. Anna Sugrue, 28, is a co-founder of The Remedy Project, a detainee advocacy group. She was onsite to encourage the donation of clothing for people inside. Among complaints received by the group are the conditions of the beds provided to detainees. “Imagine laundry lint, or the insulation in a wall,” said Sugrue.
According to Sugrue, the group has heard from loved ones of detainees that access to clean drinking water was limited over the summer, with some resorting to boiling whatever water was available in order to drink it.
Although Rep. Goldman has been able to visit the site several times, his website says that was only after repeatedly being “illegally denied” entrance to the center. This was in spite of the Bureau of Prisons ‘(BOP) previous promises to accommodate a congressional oversight visits.
“It’s like a black box,” said Sugrue. “It’s not like the guards go around saying, today I did this or that bad thing,” She added that the Remedy Project helps detainees to formally lodge complaints and grievances in order to create a paper trail of accountability.
“I feel kind of personally responsible,” says Rev. Juan Carlos, 57, of Good Shepherd, co-founder of The New Sanctuary Coalition, of his involvement, “because I don’t live too far from here.”