\n<\/p>\n
A group of young men stood atop a jungle gym in a Manhattan playground, draping Venezuelan flags down the side of it and flipping middle fingers to onlookers. Across the street from the federal courthouse where Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/strong> and Cilia Flores<\/strong> were arraigned Monday afternoon on drug-trafficking charges<\/a>, the flags could be found every few steps, and they could be purchased from an opportunistic street vendor.<\/p>\n Two sets of protesters had formed, divided by police barriers, with one cheering the dramatic capture<\/a> of the Venezuelan president and his wife\u2014and the American president who orchestrated it\u2014and another objecting to the military operation<\/a> on foreign soil that led to their capture. Kujo,<\/strong> a member of the anti-imperialist organization International League of Peoples\u2019 Struggle, who asked to be identified only by his first name, took stock of a curious but fitting artifact of the moment: a double-sided flag with Venezuela on one side, MAGA on the other.<\/p>\n \u201cHow\u2019s that for diversity?\u201d Kujo said.<\/p>\n Kujo recognized that there was a contingent of Venezuelans on the other side of the metal dividers who were cheering Maduro\u2019s day in court out of discontent with the state of their country. \u201cBut we want to be able to connect those experiences of invasion with our own,\u201d he said. One of his fellow protesters was passing around fliers. \u201cFREE PRESIDENT MADURO AND CILIA FLORES,\u201d the notice began, before offering a list of demands: \u201cEnd all sanctions on Venezuela\u2026end all military, economic, cyber, and information warfare\u2026stop the regime-change campaign now!\u201d<\/p>\n Maduro and Flores are now being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center, a Brooklyn federal jail notorious for its poor conditions as well as its high-profile inmates: in recent years alone, Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs<\/a>, Sam Bankman-Fried, Luigi Mangione<\/a>,<\/strong> and Ghislaine Maxwell<\/a>.<\/strong> According to Sam Mangel,<\/strong> a federal prison consultant who said he has been in touch with an employee at the facility, Bureau of Prisons director William Marshall<\/strong> personally toured the MDC before Maduro\u2019s arrival, which Mangel described as \u201chighly atypical.\u201d (Mangel has advised clients including Steve Bannon<\/strong> and Peter Navarro<\/strong> on navigating federal incarceration, drawing on his experience serving time for wire fraud.)<\/p>\n Mangel said that on Sunday, in the lead-up to Maduro\u2019s arraignment, the whole facility went on lockdown. (It was one of a range of logistical challenges surrounding the arrest: Airspace was closed<\/a> for US-registered aircraft in the Caribbean this past weekend.) According to Mangel\u2019s contact, Maduro is being held in solitary confinement with checkups every 15 to 30 minutes \u201cto make sure that nothing\u2019s happened to him,\u201d particularly in the aftermath of Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s suicide while in federal custody. \u201cHe is going to be treated like every other high-security inmate, regardless of his profile,\u201d Mangel said, though he noted, \u201cI believe a lot of what you\u2019re seeing now is pomp and circumstance.\u201d<\/p>\n On Saturday night, the White House posted to social media footage of Maduro\u2019s perp walk in New York. In Donald Trump<\/strong>\u2019s own account, the extraction of the Venezuelan leader had all the elements of a cinematic thriller. \u201cI watched it, literally, like I was watching a television show,\u201d he told Fox News<\/a>. Afterward, Trump posted an image<\/a> of Maduro blindfolded and handcuffed.<\/p>\n By Monday, Maduro and Flores were sitting in navy and orange prison garb in a courtroom, their legs shackled as they were flanked by their attorneys. If it seemed to Maduro like an occasion to publicly reflect on the remarkable circumstances of the occasion\u2014to engage in the stakes at the same level of theater that Trump had\u2014the 92-year-old judge in the case, Alvin Hellerstein,<\/strong> reminded him that the 30-minute hearing amounted to something more procedural. As Maduro stood and began to speak in Spanish about his capture, Hellerstein interrupted and said, \u201cThere will be time and place to get into all of this.\u201d For now, he was asking for only the basic details: a confirmation of identity and an entry of a plea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n