Maduro arrives at courthouse to face drug trafficking charges

De­posed Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro is set to make his first ap­pear­ance Mon­day in an Amer­i­can court­room on the nar­co-ter­ror­ism charges the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion used to jus­ti­fy cap­tur­ing him and bring­ing him to New York.

Maduro and his wife are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear at noon be­fore a judge for a brief, but re­quired, le­gal pro­ceed­ing that will like­ly kick off a pro­longed le­gal fight over whether he can be put on tri­al in the U.S.

His lawyers are ex­pect­ed to con­test the le­gal­i­ty of his ar­rest, ar­gu­ing that he is im­mune from pros­e­cu­tion as a sov­er­eign head of a for­eign state. But the U.S. doesn’t rec­og­nize him as Venezuela’s le­git­i­mate leader.

Maduro, along with his wife, son and three oth­ers, is ac­cused of work­ing with drug car­tels to fa­cil­i­tate the ship­ment of thou­sands of tons of co­caine in­to the U.S.

They could face life in prison if con­vict­ed.