Hours after ABC News ran a story about Mischief Toy Store, ICE agents arrived at their door

At 1 p.m. Friday, ABC News aired an interview with Abigail Adelsheim-Marshall, who owns St. Paul’s Mischief Toy Store with her parents Dan Marshall and Millie Adelsheim. She discussed the store’s decision to distribute free whistles that citizens have been using to alert neighbors of the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

“She delivered a very strident anti-ICE message, which we’re incredibly proud of,” said Dan Marshall. “Three hours later, two plainclothes ICE agents came into our store and served us with a Notice of Inspection.”

The agents were asking for I-9 documents — which prove people are legal to work in this country — from the store’s employees. Marshall said the store has been audited for various things in the past, but this was different. For starters, the notice listed the store by its name, rather than its legal name Mischief LLC, which has been used in every other government document the store has received. Also, Marshall said, he was alerted to previous audits by mail, not by in-person agents.

“In 27 years of being retailers in St. Paul, we’ve never been audited for this,” he said. “We have five part-time employees and three owners. So tell me why they want to waste time on five part-time employees. But here we are.”

Representatives for DHS and ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

The owners of Mischief Toy Store have been outspoken in opposition to both ICE and President Trump. In April, the store joined a lawsuit with a handful of other retailers and manufacturers against the U.S. government in an effort to roll back international tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.

Marshall’s daughter Ada Adelsheim was working when the ICE agents arrived. They flashed IDs, but Adelsheim didn’t take a photo of them. The agents left behind paperwork for the store to complete. The store’s lawyer, who specializes in small business legal issues, told Marshall numerous immigrant-owned businesses have also been hit with this audit.

“I’m going to be mailing the documentation they requested along with a letter from our lawyer and hopefully that’s enough,” Marshall said. “I hope they don’t go out of their way to find trivial errors in the forms. We’re pretty sure this was used as harassment.”

He said the documentation also asked the store not to publicize the fact they received it.

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“That was a request we chose to ignore,” Marshall said. “At the same time, we restocked our anti-ICE yard signs.”

The store posted a photo of the letter on social media, where it quickly took off. Marshall said the ACLU reached out along with numerous elected officials. Business-wise, Marshall said, the traffic at Mischief felt like the weekend before Christmas. In the first three hours after opening on Saturday, they sold 250 anti-ICE yard signs. Marshall said the store is paying it forward and will donate $5,000 to local nonprofits.

“I’m feeling super anxious about our community and what’s happening,” Marshall said. “It’s traumatizing to see my neighbors being terrorized. It’s one of the worst things I’ve seen in my life. But I’m also feeling defiant. This is an attempt to silence us and it’s going to do the opposite.”

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