Leftist Late Show host Stephen Colbert’s thoughts on the Supreme Court’s recent ICE ruling was so off base Tuesday that even left-wing Justice Sonia Sotomayor couldn’t let his lies pass without slapping them down.

Sotomayor was Colbert’s guest on Tuesday to flog her new book, but even though she was a strong dissenter in the high court’s recent decision concerning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), she would not let Colbert get away with his wild and false characterization of the ruling.

Colbert took a jab at Trump, saying, “Trump’s friends aren’t all dead pedophiles. He also has six close pals on the Supreme Court.” And he then went on to tease his assault on the Supreme Court in his monologue where he said that “the Court is letting ICE agents target people for deportation based on their race or language.”

This is a false and oversimplified claim, of course. The Supreme Court made no such ruling.

Once he welcomed Sotomayor onto the show, he returned to his false claims, saying, “Let’s talk about the decision yesterday. Yesterday, the Court ruled from that emergency docket that ICE can round up, in this case it was people of Hispanic heritage or who spoke Spanish in the case of Los Angeles and the California ICE arrests or detainments, but really anyone for any reason.”

Sotomayor replied, “Well, no…” but Colbert interrupted her to continue pushing his talking points.

“I’m not a lawyer, but I’m going to push back here because in this case they’re saying those are the circumstances, but isn’t the upshot of that if they are looking for reasonable suspicion, which is a much lower bar than probable cause, they could make up new rationales for a different group of people who they feel are associated with some crime that has to be prevented,” he said.

Trying to get a word in edgewise, Sotomayor tired again and said, “Now, let me stop you. In fairness to the majority, and by the way, I didn’t agree with them..”

Colbert again interrupted a few more times. But Sotomayor finally was able to get to her point.

“I didn’t agree with them. But they claimed there was more than those two factors: being Latino and speaking Spanish. I don’t think the third adds much to the equation, but they do. They say it’s because they are working in low-wage jobs,” she said.

There was also a fourth aspect to the SCOTUS ruling and that was locations where illegals congregate to pick up work, including parking lots and bus stops where they often wait to be picked up for day labor.

“Well, that’s what they said. Let’s not go any further. Okay. That’s what they said. And they’re working at jobs where illegal aliens typically work. That’s the claim,” Sotomayor replied.

Colbert went on to read a portion of Sotomayor’s official dissent in the ruling, where she wrote, “That decision of the majority is yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work in a low-wage job here rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost.”

In any case, the ruling does not say that merely speaking Spanish is enough to deport someone, as Colbert claimed. There are several criteria in the ruling to guide ICE arrests, not just speaking Spanish, as Colbert tried to claim.

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