A Death Sentence for Ali Ali Bin

Ali Ali Bin faces a death sentence. And one of the few human beings standing between Ali and his fate is a chaplain named Rick Kienholz.

Kienholz makes his living as a counselor, but he met Ali while offering religious guidance at Martin Hall, a jail for juveniles in eastern Washington state. A number of local counties use Martin Hall to house accused thieves, robbers and murderers. But federal agencies like the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) also use Martin Hall to house innocent kids, like Ali, who languish in bureaucratic limbo, sometimes for years.

Kienholz first spotted Ali on a Sunday night at Martin Hall about a year ago. "I saw this very tall black kid, sitting by himself, and he was not interacting with anyone," Kienholz says. The staff said Ali had been there two days and didn't speak English.

"So I went and sat by him, and I started speaking Swahili. And I thought his jaw was going to drop on the table," Kienholz says. The chaplain knew a few words in the African language, but not many, so they couldn't communicate well. But they bonded.

And over the next few months, Kienholz would learn Ali's horrifying tale.

At age 14, Ali lived with his parents in Mombasa, Kenya. His grandfather had founded a political party, but the opposition was now in power. One day, forces from the party came to Ali's home. His mother opened the door.

"And they hacked her to death with machetes, while Ali, with his 11-year-old sister, was hiding in the rafters," Kienholz says.

Ali's sister went to live with their uncle, but Ali spent the next three years as a street kid. At age 16, Ali saw some political banners belonging to the party that killed his mother. He and his friends pulled down those banners and burned them. They were arrested.

"He was held without charges for six months in a Kenyan jail, where he was daily brutalized," Kienholz says. Ali was afraid he'd be killed. Then authorities placed Ali in a work release program. He used that opportunity to escape and stow away on a ship, a ship that would eventually dock in Seattle.

"He didn't commit a crime. He didn't sneak into the country. He came on a ship, and he immediately came to INS and requested asylum," Kienholz says. Ali was imprisoned at Martin Hall.

Martin Hall has been a lockup for dozens of children held by INS. One of the former case managers there is highly critical of how those young would-be immigrants were treated.

Randy Wenrich, who worked at Martin Hall for about three years, wrote a letter to Spokane County Superior Court Judge Neal Q. Rielly this February. Wenrich leveled serious complaints about the handling of INS juveniles. He was primarily concerned about the cases of Jin Rong Yiou and Xue Zhong Zhou, a brother and sister, ages 11 and 14, who tried to enter this country in October of 1999.

Wenrich said that Xue Zhong contracted hepatitis while at Martin Hall, possibly while he was locked up with four other Chinese boys in a small cell. "I don't think it is fair to send him back to a country with a disease he may have caught due to his treatment while here -- especially since he will not get the appropriate medical treatment there," Wenrich wrote.

He also complained that Jin, who was born as the second child in a country with a one-child policy, was the victim of discrimination in China. He said their defense against immigration charges was financed by the very smuggler who brought them into the country, and that the attorney failed to represent the best interests of the children.

Wenrich also leveled broader charges. "I left [Martin Hall] ... because of the continued prejudicial and discriminatory treatment of all the immigration juveniles and because I saw their situations progressively getting worse instead of better," he wrote.