Former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife appeared in federal court in New York on Monday on narco-terrorism-related charges.

Maduro said in federal court Monday in Lower Manhattan, "I am not guilty," and that he is an "innocent" and "decent" man. He entered a plea of not guilty.

Maduro's wife, Cilia Flores, also pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking and weapons charges before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein.

CBS News Chicago Legal Analyst Irv Miller said the primary question in court Monday would likely be whether Maduro should remain detained.

While the odds of Maduro getting released were almost zero, Miller said he would make an argument in favor of releasing Maduro if he were representing the Venezuelan leader.

"He's a foreign national, and he's the head of state of a country, and if I was his attorney, I would ask the judge, 'Judge, listen, you have a head of state here, and under international law, I think he should be released,'" said Miller. "That's the only thing that I can think of that would make this procedure, when it does happen, it's more of an interesting type of procedure."

How salient of an argument would something like that be?

"Not very good," Miller said, "but I would make it to protect the record."

Indeed Maduro and his wife were not released.

Miller said the only comparable case to a sitting head of state on trial in federal court in this country is Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator whom the U.S. removed back in 1989.

Miller also pointed out that Maduro and his wife are not the first defendants to be arrested in the narco-terrorism case.

"Last year, one of the other co-defendants pled guilty in June, but there's been no sentencing date," said Miller, "yet that means to me that there's probably a good chance that he's a cooperator, and he will probably be the main witness in the case against the former president of Venezuela."

Venezuelan Gen. Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, also known as "El Pollo," was scheduled for sentencing in October of last year. He pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, engaging in narco-terrorism for the benefit of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia or the "FARC," and weapons offenses.

One of Carvajal Barrios' codefendants, Oliver Antonio Alcala Cordones, was sentenced to 21 years and eight months in prison after pleading guilty to providing guns and other material support to FARC.

Northwestern professor accuses President Trump of "gunboat diplomacy"

The International Criminal Court is pushing back on Maduro's arrest, with the court's first chief prosector, Luis Moreno Ocampo, saying the attack violated international law.

Karen Alter, an international relations professor at Northwestern University, concurred with this position.

"Under international law, force can only be used in self-defense," Alter said. "So here's an irony — all the U.S. actions in Venezuela, blowing up boats, blowing up boat launching, and now snatching Maduro look like acts of aggression. The more the U.S. bullies and continues to pressure, that is acts of aggression, and blockade is an act of aggression under international law."

Alter said she expects the U.S. name to be dragged through the mud in the United Nations General Assembly, and Americans will "wake up" to the impression such actions convey about the U.S.

"It's gunboat diplomacy of the 19th century," Alter said, "and is this really what they elected President Trump to do?"

Currently, many are applauding the arrest of Maduro, pointing out that he was a brutal dictator who contributed to narco-terrorism in the United States as spelled out in the indictment. Nevertheless, Alter said the mission to capture Maduro was a "terrible idea,."

"I mean, maybe this is what Vladimir Putin intended to do in Ukraine. We can hope that President Xi Jinping does not decide to go and grab the elected president of Taiwan. Maduro is a thug, and he stole the last election.," she said. "But there's a reason why the world stopped gunboat diplomacy. The chance for it to escalate into conflict, violence, and war is so high, and we didn't have to do this. There were alternatives."

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Saturday that the mission to capture Maduro and President Trump's rhetoric indicates the U.S. could take similar actions in other countries where leaders are facing similar indictments.

"[The president] has the inherent authority under our constitution to protect these American national interests and as the chief law enforcement officer to make sure that indicted drug traffickers face justice, whether they're indicted in Venezuela or indicted in the United States," Cotton told Margaret Brennan on CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

But Alter emphasized that President Trump has called for annexation of territory where no drug trafficking or dictators are involved, such as Greenland and Panama.

"President Trump can create any kind of pretext, and that's exactly the problem. There are actually a lot of countries that are involved in narco-trafficking historically and in the present. And so the other thing President Trump has said is that maybe he'll use the military to directly narco-traffickers in Mexico and perhaps in Colombia," Alter said. "So you can see how this could very quickly escalate into regime change — wars of choice — which is exactly what President Trump railed against for decades."

Alter also said she expects opposition within the U.S. to the moves in Venezuela to grow.

"It's just such a terrible idea. That's why no one has done it in the past," she said. "We did it once with General Noriega and got away with it, but that was a different world and a different context. And I think it's a brazen act that if you don't stop and confront, we know that President Trump wants to escalate in many countries around the world."