A Wendy’s Customer Reportedly Threatened to Call ICE on Workers, Then Defended Herself by Saying: ‘I’m Black, I Can’t Be Racist’

A Wendy’s worker in Minnesota says a drive-thru dispute turned into an ICE threat, a swipe at his phone, and a woman marching toward the restaurant after he refused to back down. According to The Nerd Stash, the employee posted video of the encounter, insisting he’d done nothing more than take her order before things escalated.

He says the woman grew upset mid-order, and that’s when she brought up ICE, threatening to report him and his Hispanic coworkers. That’s when he pulled out his phone. Footage shows her still parked in her vehicle, three young children reportedly in the back seat, shouting “You’re racist” before adding, “I’m black I can’t be racist.” She then leaned out through the drive-thru window and swung at the device, though her hand never made contact.

She started to pull away, and the employee, apparently unwilling to let it drop, kept goading her. It worked, she stopped, got out, and walked toward him. He didn’t wait around, ducking back inside and locking the doors behind him. From outside, she called him scared before finally leaving, though he says that wasn’t quite the end of it either, claiming she came back later and swept the straws off the counter.

What Minnesota Law Actually Says About the Threats

Threatening to call immigration authorities on someone doesn’t automatically hand police an easy charge, and Minnesota’s coercion law shows why. Under Minnesota Statute 609.27, coercion requires that a threat actually force someone into doing, or not doing, something against their will, whether that’s a threat of harm, property damage, or a false criminal accusation.

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If the employee kept working through the confrontation rather than being pressured into some specific act, prosecutors would have a harder time proving the coercion charge held up, even though the threat itself was clearly made. Reaching for his phone is a separate matter entirely. Minnesota’s fifth-degree assault statute, 609.224, covers any act intended to put someone in fear of immediate harm, and an attempt alone is enough, meaning contact isn’t required for the charge to apply.

Whether she actually touched him matters less than whether her lunge was meant to intimidate him into stopping the recording. The straw-sweeping incident, if it happened as described, points to Minnesota’s disorderly conduct law, Statute 609.72, which criminalizes behavior in a public or private place that a person knows, or reasonably should know, will provoke anger, alarm, or a breach of the peace.

Returning to a restaurant specifically to knock items off a counter after an earlier confrontation would likely qualify, regardless of whether any of the swept items were damaged. None of this hinges on her stated belief that her race exempted her from acting in a racist way. Threats, coercion, and assault statutes apply based on conduct, not the identity of the person accused of committing them, meaning her defense wouldn’t carry any legal weight even if the underlying allegations were pursued.

Threats tied to a person’s immigration status have shown up in a growing number of viral confrontations recently, and so have arguments that someone’s use of a language other than English somehow gave the other party license to act this way.

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