Neat Hair, Clean Fingernails a Dead Giveaway in Shelters
Homeless shelters in several major cities are reporting an upswing in the number of undercover FBI and other Federal agents who spend the night posing as vagrants. The increase is apparently related to a recent warning from the Department of Homeland Security that terrorists might disguise themselves as vagrants.
“Some nights it seems like the number of clean-cut young men with no dirt under their fingernails outnumbers our usual clients,” said Rhubarb Edwards, the night manager at Mercy of God Shelter in Newark’s Flatiron section, one of the city’s poorer neighborhoods.
“I’m not saying who I think they are,” Johnson said, “I could get in a heap of trouble if I did that. But it’s real easy to spot a fake homeless person. These young men do remind of that time that Martha Stewart and some of her people came here pretending to be homeless because they were toughening her up to go to prison.”
In Houston, The Rev. Bentley Riley, who serves sandwiches to the homeless living under the Pierce Elevated highway adjacent to Root Square, said he has seen an increase in those who show up for his free food.
“I’m not going to speculate about who they are, but they have the neatest hair and the closest shaves and the cleanest fingernails in Houston,” Rev. Riley said. He added that a lawyer with Legal Aid who helps the homeless had warned him not to speculate about his new clients, lest he run afoul of the Patriot Act.
“I just smile, hand them a sandwich and remind them that Jesus loves them,” he said.
Clean shaven new clients have also begun appearing at shelters in New York suburbs.
“We got ‘em, alright and they ain’t fooling nobody. But I ain’t saying nothing about who they might be. I wouldn’t take too kindly to the kind of prison they might send me to if I told you my opinion,” said Spivey Alterman, a volunteer at the Crescent Moon shelter in Mineola on Long Island. He said he wasn’t in the mood for a “Cuban vacation, all expenses paid.”
The latest warning that terrorists might disguise themselves as vagrants came after the London subway bombings in July.
A spokesman for the Shelter Consortium, a Washington lobbying group, said they had received reports from “several dozen” shelters across the country about an influx of new clients with clean fingernails.
“If they are who we think they are, which we can’t say, then it’s reassuring to know that they are on the job protecting us,” said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified, citing the sensitive nature of the information.