If you follow major news outlets, you probably keep hearing about a “crime wave” caused by bail reform. It’s a false narrative. Bail reform is a success — releasing more people from jail by minimizing or eliminating cash bail works. More people get out of jail and get home to their families, without any jump people skipping town, and without any jump in crime.

There is a serious, newsworthy issue that warrants attention: an increase in homicide rates. This issue deserves an adult conversation that we’re not getting from major media outlets. Instead, reporters rely primarily on police sources who point to bail reform as the explanation for increased homicide rates. Article after article parrots this claim as fact — with no evidence whatsoever. With frustrating frequency, government officials and reporters assume that crime is a monolithic problem and jailing people fixes it. This narrative is false and irresponsible. Here are the facts:

There is not a “crime wave.” Homicide rates increased in 2020, at the same time that other crimes declined and remain at historic lows. Recent reports of a spike in shoplifting are largely unsupported. The real question is why there is a short-term increase in homicides while other crimes continue to decline. Responsible discourse would focus on how nationwide changes that began in 2020 — like social and financial disruption from the pandemic, or significant increases in gun purchases — may have contributed to this universal increase in homicides.

Cash bail doesn’t lower homicide rates. Most places in the country still rely heavily on cash bail, including places that led the pack in increasing homicide rates. The few places that have reduced reliance on cash bail did so did so for years before 2020 without an increase in crime, including homicide.

Incarceration doesn’t lower homicide rates. We can’t jail our way to a lower homicide rate. Increasing incarceration in the United States for more than two decades did not reduce violent crime. We remain, by far, the world’s leading incarcerator, but that status did not prevent an uptick in homicides. If anything, incarceration is so destabilizing that it increases the risk that people will commit a violent offense when they come home.

Local investment does lower homicide rates. Although homicide rates rose across the country, homicides remain concentrated in a handful of neighborhoods. Public discourse should center the needs of people who live in these neighborhoods, not leverage violence as a talking point to advance a political agenda. Locally guided investments in physical attributes like streetlights, parks, and public transportation; economic opportunity like youth summer employment; and social connections like violence interruption programs are all associated with drops in homicide and violence.

The false narrative that bail reform increases crime is also borne of poor reporting on what “bail reform” actually means. Bail reform policies ensure that judges appoint a defense lawyer, hold a bail hearing, and jail people only if evidence shows that it’s necessary. The idea is that judges should have good reasons to detain people, rather than picking a bail amount and leaving it to chance whether people can afford to pay for their release. We’re talking about basic constitutional safeguards against arbitrary detention that destroys lives. It’s not exactly radical.

When judges take these reforms seriously, the result is that many more people are released — without any negative effect on public safety. Releasing more people actually has a positive effect on public safety, because the faster that people reconnect with their families and fulfill their everyday responsibilities, the less likely they are to be rearrested. Releasing people from jail also alleviates the risk of death and severe illness — and the certainty of suffering — imposed on people incarcerated in our local jails. Reporting that scapegoats bail reform acts with callous disregard for the human cost of relying on cash bail. At a minimum, fair and accurate reporting should critically examine the assumptions that officials make about crime rates and their link to incarceration.

Following a long flight home to the United States from a vacation in Turkey, Abdirahman Aden Kariye, an imam at a mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota, was met at the jet bridge by two U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers. They pulled him away from the mass of other travelers and took him to a small, windowless room, where he would sit for the next several hours. The officers took his belongings, including his phone. They asked him questions about his travels, whom he saw, and what he did during his vacation. As he answered, an officer scribbled notes in a notepad. Then the questions turned even more personal.

“What type of Muslim are you?”

“Are you Sunni or Shi’a?”

“Are you Salafi or Sufi?”

“What type of Islamic lectures do you give?”

“Where did you study Islam?”

The CBP officers’ questions made Imam Kariye, a U.S. citizen, feel that he was being treated as some kind of suspect, even though he knew he had done nothing wrong. Indeed, the officers’ questions sent a clear message: The U.S. government believes that there is something inherently suspect about Islamic religious beliefs and practices. The officers treated him like an outsider even as he was returning home to his own country.

By asking Imam Kariye these questions, the CBP officers crossed the important constitutional line that separates religion and government. They violated one of the foundational principles of our democracy — enshrined in the Constitution — that the government may not single out followers of one faith for disfavor or target individuals for differential treatment because of their religious status. Personal religious beliefs and practices are supposed to be free from government discrimination and unwarranted government prying.

Unfortunately, over the last two decades, the ACLU and other advocacy organizations have heard countless stories of Americans who were stopped at the border and questioned about their religious beliefs and practices. The travelers subjected to this religious questioning all have one thing in common: They are Muslim. Armed federal officers take them aside and ask them questions like those asked of Imam Kariye, as well as questions like, “Do you attend mosque?” “Which mosque do you attend?” and “How many times a day do you pray?”

We have not heard stories of CBP officers asking other travelers, “What kind of Christian are you?” or “Do you go to church every Sunday?” And we have not heard accounts of non-Muslim religious leaders being questioned about the contents of their sermons or their religious training. Invasive religious questioning is targeted at Muslims — a clear violation of the constitutional rights to equal protection and religious freedom.

Imam Kariye is a proud Muslim and is unapologetic about his faith. However, because of CBP’s scrutiny and religious questioning, Imam Kariye cannot fully practice and express his faith in the way that he otherwise would while traveling. Normally, for instance, he wears a religious headdress, called a kufi, as a symbol of his Muslim identity. But at airports and the border, he now takes his kufi off. He no longer carries a Quran when he travels, and he typically avoids kneeling and bowing down in prayer at airports and the border. He removes visible signs of his Islamic faith as a cautionary measure to avoid additional CBP scrutiny and unconstitutional questioning.

No one should feel pressured to hide their faith at our nation’s borders. That is why we are representing Imam Kariye and two other Muslim Americans in a lawsuit filed this week against CBP. We are seeking a court order barring CBP from asking our clients about their religious beliefs, practices, and associations, and declaring that CBP’s targeting of Muslims for religious questioning violates the Constitution. Muslims have a constitutional right to equal protection under the law and cannot be singled out for differential treatment. And all people have a right to practice their religion in peace and privacy, free from unwarranted government scrutiny.

Robert Weir and his crew were on an overnight fishing trip to the Morant Cays in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Jamaica in September 2017 when a storm hit and blew their boat off course. Hopelessly lost and trying to find their way home, Robert steered the boat toward Haiti, thinking it was Jamaica. As he did so, they were approached by a vessel flying a U.S. flag.

Little did they know then that their lives were about to be turned upside down, and that it would be nearly a year before they saw their homes and families again.

As the U.S.-flagged boat approached, the men on board identified themselves as U.S. Coast Guard officers and forcibly stopped the fishermen’s boat at gunpoint. One of the officers asked Robert what he and his crew were doing, and after telling the officer that they were on a fishing trip but were lost and trying to find their way home, two of the officers boarded the boat and searched it and the men for drugs. They didn’t find any. Yet, instead of helping the crew find their way home, the Coast Guard detained the men, transferred them to a Coast Guard cutter that had pulled up alongside, and later, as the four men sat chained to the deck of that cutter, destroyed their fishing boat.

Robert and his crew then spent more than a month chained to the decks of the Coast Guard cutter and three other boats, as the Coast Guard sailed the Caribbean Sea, making stops at Guantánamo Bay, St. Thomas, and Puerto Rico. Chained to the open decks, the men were exposed to the elements, even as the second cutter set sail as Hurricane Maria hit the Caribbean. They were denied access to shelter, basic sanitation, proper food, and medical care. The men’s skin burned and blistered in the sun, and they were drenched and chilled by rain and sea water.

Back in Jamaica, some of the men’s families presumed they had died at sea when they didn’t return as scheduled. Knowing that their families would be concerned for their safety, the men pleaded repeatedly with their Coast Guard captors to allow them to make calls to their families, but were refused each time they did so.

The Coast Guard detained the men at sea for more than 30 days, without charging them with a crime, before delivering them to the custody of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Miami.

There, the United States initially charged the men with drug trafficking offenses, but ultimately abandoned those charges, admitting to the federal district court during the men’s sentencing hearing that it “would have required a miracle” to prove those charges. Instead, the government charged the men with violating a little-known U.S. law, which makes it a crime to lie to a federal officer about one’s destination on the high seas. Because the men had told the Coast Guard that they’d planned to fish in Jamaican waters, but were in fact heading to Haiti (because they were lost), the men each pleaded guilty. The federal court sentenced them each to 10 months’ imprisonment.

After serving their sentences, the Department of Homeland Security held the men in immigration detention for two more months before removing them from the United States to Jamaica, almost a year after their encounter with the Coast Guard in the Caribbean. The men returned home to their families in August 2018, their livelihoods destroyed and financially ruined.

Now, more than four years after the men embarked on their fishing trip, we’re asking the Supreme Court to hear their case to ensure that the United States will be held accountable for violating their rights — and to ensure others don’t meet similar fates.

The Coast Guard stopped Robert and his crew as part of a drug interdiction program under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, a relic of the failed war on drugs that directs the Coast Guard to prosecute people suspected of drug smuggling in international waters, even if the vessel flies a foreign flag and there is no proof the vessel is intended for U.S. shores. Under the auspices of the MDLEA, the U.S. Coast Guard apprehends crews from vessels suspected of carrying drugs on the high seas, charges them with crimes in the United States, and often subjects them to prolonged detention in inhumane conditions.

In the case of Robert and his crew, even though there were no drugs on board, they faced nightmarish conditions and prolonged detention at sea. Countless other people have suffered at the hands of the Coast Guard under this policy.

According to the men’s plea agreement, the men claimed their destination was the waters near the coast of Jamaica, when they were actually destined for Haiti. But at issue in this case is not whether the men lied to the Coast Guard. This case is about Congress’ authority to criminalize conduct on the high seas, including lying to a Coast Guard officer about one’s destination, that has no effect whatsoever on the United States.

At the time of our nation’s founding, the Constitution made a distinction between two different types of crimes on the high seas: piracy other felonies. The framers gave Congress the power to define and punish piracy, and a separate power to define and punish felonies. At the time, and today, international law allowed nations to criminalize piracy on the high seas, regardless of the connection to the country prosecuting. But piracy was the exception to the rule; in the case of other felonies, it was widely accepted, including by James Madison, that Congress could only punish felonies on the high seas if those acts had a nexus to the United States — if the defendant was a citizen, the boat was flying under a U.S. flag, or the conduct was directed at the United States.

In this case, there is no dispute that neither the crew nor their conduct had any connection to the United States. Robert and his crew are Jamaican nationals who were stopped in international waters on a vessel flying the Jamaican flag. They were not engaged in any conduct directed at the United States. In our petition to the Supreme Court, we argue that under the original understanding of the Constitution, Congress cannot criminalize the conduct of Robert and his crew because they had no connection to the U.S.

In upholding the men’s convictions, the lower court ignored the well-established nexus requirement, allowing Congress virtually unlimited authority to criminalize any conduct by anyone on the high seas. But this interpretation flies in the face of Supreme Court precedent and the original intent of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court has an opportunity to correct this injustice. Nobody should again face the same cruelty as Robert and his crew.