The Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn (MDC Brooklyn) is a United States federal administrative detention facility in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. It holds male and female prisoners of all security levels. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. Most prisoners 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. As of April 2022, 1,712 prisoners are held in MDC Brooklyn. In 2019, one former warden, Cameron Lindsay said that "The M.D.C. was one of the most troubled, if not the most troubled facility in the Bureau of Prisons." 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 the early 1990s. 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 1600 inmates. In 1999, a second facility was opened adjacent to the original complex to house inmates who have already 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