[b][size=2em]THE PLAIN DEALER[/size][/b] [right]Monday, December 25, 2017[/right] [b][size=1em]CLEVELAND: FOREIGN AND HOMELESS WITH A BABY[/size][/b] Two police officers found a couple of homeless people accompanied by a newborn baby in a park near the harbour. The baby was roughly swaddled in a threadbare and dirty onesie, and has immediately been transferred to a hospital to receive emergency medical care. It was around midnight when two police officers on a routine patrol in Goorich-Kirtland Park were alerted by what seemed to be the wails of a baby. They followed the sound and found a couple of homeless people, seated on a bench, who were lulling a very small child, clothed in a skimpy and old onesie. With the temperatures dropping well below 30, the officers immediately called an ambulance in, which carried the baby away to one of the city’s hospitals (the police refused to disclose which one for privacy reasons). The two parents had no ids to show to the police officers. They claimed to come from the Middle East, though their exact country of origin remains unknown, as well as how or where they entered the United States. In rudimentary English, the man said he was a carpenter and he and his pregnant wife had fled the war. His wife explained the baby was their son, but at the same time she pretended to be still a virgin. The couple has been arrested and placed in custody, while police inquires of all nearby maternity wards in search of anyone whose newborn baby could have been abducted during the night. DNA tests will be conducted if that search fails. The couple could be charged for abduction and illegal entry in the United States and face jail or deportation. The fate of the baby remains unknown at this stage. In the event he is the real newborn son of the couple, he would be granted American citizenship and entrusted to a foster family. Asked about this affair during his morning briefing, Cleveland’s mayor, Frank J. Jackson, has once more deplored the lack of means to build centers where homeless people could be sheltered in dignity. He blames the federal administration, which, he says “has repeatedly cut down the fundings we use to keep the shelters open throughout winter. I’m not surprised by such a case, and I wonder how it has not happened before.” He said he would help those people as best he could, even in court if necessary. Police detectives wonder if this case might be somehow linked to the interception, only hours before, of three strangers by a prowl car. According the sheriff, those strangers, whom he calls “vagrants”, were roving aimlessly through downtown streets, adorned in precious, but exceedingly strange garments. When asked to decline their identity by the police officers, they declared they were “mages and messengers of God” and were following a mysterious “star” that led them to Cleveland. The strangers were unarmed but the bags they carried with them contained various dubious substances that have been seized and dispatched to laboratories for analysis. “We feared they could be drugs or explosive substances,” declared the sheriff. “We were told that a random ISIS attack was more than likely. We cannot take any chance with delirious bums who behave irrationally and might well be up to no good.” Though the results of the analyses were not available at the time, the sheriff stated that the three strangers could be indicted for drug detention or for planning a terror attack. The prosecutor declined to comment at this stage. Robert Portman, junior senator for Ohio and leader of the Republicans in the state, regrets the situation, but has also wondered how strangers without passports could sneak through the United States’ border and travel hundreds of kilometres without being spotted by authorities.