An anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) toy store in St. Paul, Minn. is now claiming it has been targeted with a “random” audit from federal agents.
The owners of Mischief Toy Store alleged they were hit with a “retaliatory” audit shortly after ABC News reported on Jan. 16 that it was creating and passing out free 3D printed whistles for protesters to use to notify neighbors whenever ICE agents were nearby. Abigail Adelsheim-Marshall — who co-owns the business alongside her parents — told Jorge Ventura, reporting for the Daily Caller News Foundation, in a Thursday in-store interview that she found the timing of the audit “suspicious.”
“So, I was on ABC National News talking about how we have been giving away whistles since Thanksgiving,” Adelsheim-Marshall told the DCNF in the interview, conducted inside her store with several transgender flags visible on display in the background. “And four hours later, we were served with an I-9 audit, which is a thing [that] technically they’re allowed to do, but I consider the timing suspicious.”
I-9 audits verify employment eligibility and make sure employers are adhering to legal hiring practices, according to FordMurray law. The audits can be conducted by either ICE or the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), according to Legal Aid at Work.
“Any allegation that DHS inspected Mischief Toy Store in response to the owner’s daughter doing an interview is FALSE,” Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Friday in a statement provided to the DCNF. “This is a flagrant attempt to further demonize our law enforcement officers who are already facing a more than 1300% increase in assaults against them. There is an active HSI investigation involving this business that has nothing to do with this owners’ political views.”
“There is MASSIVE Fraud in Minneapolis, at least $19 billion and that’s just the tip of [the] iceberg,” McLaughlin continued. “Our Homeland Security Investigators are on the ground in Minneapolis conducting wide scale investigations to get justice for the American people who have been robbed blind. We will root out this fraud and hold those who steal from American taxpayers accountable. The American people deserve answers on how their taxpayer money is being used and arrests when abuse is found.”
“Our business name is ‘Mischief LLC,’ and they just put ‘Mischief Toy Store’ on it [the audit paperwork], which is not a legal entity,” Adelsheim-Marshall told the DCNF. “So the whole thing is weird. And they’ve also been targeting a bunch of immigrant-owned businesses [in the state], especially in Minneapolis … according to our lawyer, we’re one of the first white-owned businesses that they’ve targeted.”
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When asked about whether the two federal agents provided any specific reasoning for auditing the toy store, Adelsheim-Marshall replied that they gave “no reason, just a random audit.” She also emphasized that the St. Paul community has largely been “supportive” of Mischief Toy Store in the wake of the business being audited.
“Our community is really supportive,” Adelsheim-Marshall said. “We’ve actually had a really busy week [in the store]. We’ve been one of the only places you can get ‘ICE Out’ signs right now. So, we are far from the only business fighting ICE in the Twin Cities, and there’s many others giving away whistles, but in this moment we’ve certainly got the social media rush and a lot of people are really supporting us, which we appreciate.”
Adelsheim-Marshall, who calls herself as the toy store’s “Mischief Manager” in her LinkedIn profile, told the DCNF she wants the Trump administration to “stop terrorizing the streets of Minnesota.”
“I’d love it if they would stop terrorizing the streets of Minnesota,” Adelsheim-Marshall said. “We are one of the longest standing blue states in the country … and we’re not going to give that up. You know, we are going to continue organizing and resisting because what’s happening right now is a fascist takeover, and Minnesota is going to stand up to that.”
ICE has been spearheading a massive immigration crackdown effort in Minnesota. Hundreds of businesses in the state announced plans to close on Friday as part of an “economic blackout” in an effort to protest ICE’s ongoing enforcement surge in the state, CNN reported.
On Friday, a group of protesters reportedly staged a “sit-in” at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport over deportation flights amid ICE’s crackdown.
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