The 19-year-old woman – who asked to be identified by only her first name, Aishah, out of fear for her safety – said she was wearing a hijab and face mask when she ordered a beverage July 1 at the Starbucks inside the St. Paul-Midway Target.
She repeated her name slowly and multiple times to the barista, according to Jaylani Hussein, executive director of Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who provided The Washington Post with a copy of the complaint filed Monday with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.
But when her drink was ready, the acronym for the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria had been written on the cup. Aishah raised the issue with a supervisor, but Hussein said her grievance was dismissed. The cafe’s supervisor told her, “Mistakes sometimes happen with customers’ names,” according to the complaint.
“There is absolutely no way she [the barista] could have heard it as ‘ISIS’,” Aishah told CNN. “Aishah is not an unknown name and I repeated it multiple times.”
She said she was given a new drink and a $25 gift card before being escorted out by store security.
Target in a statement said it was “very sorry for this guest’s experience at our store” and said representatives “immediately apologized to her when she made our store leaders aware of the situation.”
