Cosplayer Clara Tan was one of many people who had hoped to attend the Umamusume: Pretty Derby event in California last week, which wound up being cancelled after U.S. immigration refused visas to the Japanese cast and staff. Still, she stuck around with friends, attended events, and cosplayed as character Super Creek. On October 26, Tan flew back home to Rochester, New York, got off her plane, collected her luggage, and left the terminal. It was then that four ICE agents shouted her name, and informed her they had a warrant for her arrest.
This was at midnight, in the dark, outside the airport. Tan asked if she could see the warrant, and asked the four men if they could show her some ID. “We can show it to you in the car,” replied one, “just come peacefully.” Trying to make a call on her phone for help, Tan says all four rushed her at once, sending her phone flying, and tackled her to the ground. “I eat pavement,” she writes in a Facebook post detailing the events.
As she hits the sidewalk, Tan hears what she describes as “a godawful crack” come from her foot, and then realizes she’s being cuffed behind her back. “I’m being kidnapped and I have no idea who these men are,” Tan writes. She’s dragged to an unmarked SUV, thrown in the back, and claims to have heard one of the men say, “This could all have been avoided if you’d just come quietly.”
Tan says she was then taken to Batavia Detention Center, refused access to her lawyer, and thrown in a small, metal room with rough blankets to sleep on. But the pain in her ankle prevented real sleep, and attempts to ask for her phone call were met with demands that she “shut the fuck up and go to sleep.” The next day, more prisoners arrive, all men, and Tan (who is trans) asks if separate gender arrangements are available. Again, she says she’s told to “shut the fuck up.” Tan switches to asking for a nurse for the pain in her foot, and again is told no.
After 14 hours in detention, Tan is finally able to see her arrest warrant. She claims it was not signed by a judge, and that while some of the details it includes about her are true—that’s she’s Singaporean and not a U.S. national—it also states that she entered the U.S. on an “unknown date” and “unknown point of entry,” and doesn’t acknowledge that in actuality she studied at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy from June 19, 2019 to October 31, 2020. Tan, at home, possessed official documentation (including her passport) that showed her legal entry and date, and knew there was abundant evidence freely available on the internet proving her attendance at and graduation from the academy. Protests about these facts were, again, ignored.
Tan again asked a guard about whether she should be housed somewhere else. “We don’t house women here,” she claims the guard replied.
“You’ve got a problem then,” Tan replied. “I’m not a man.”
“Well, do you have your junk?” the guard is alleged to have replied, and Tan explains, “Not last I checked.”
“Wait, you don’t have a penis?”
At this point the guard fetched medical. Two women appeared and validated Tan’s claims, which she says caused something of a panic. Instead of being detained until her court date, the single-sex facility into which Tan has been interred decides to release her with an ankle monitor. She’s informed that Bataina.”
“My decision to pursue bottom surgery is why I’m now sitting here, in the emergency room of Strong Memorial Hospital, 90 percent sure that my left foot is fractured, and regaling you all with this tale of weft and woe,” Tan writes.
It seems worthwhile to end on Tan’s own concluding point, which she addresses to those on the right who might attend a Umamusume: Pretty Derby event:
Politics is always far away, until it’s not. Immigration crackdowns don’t really affect you personally until your favorite performers can’t enter the country. Or maybe a cosplayer you enjoyed spending time with had her foot broken and was detained for eighteen hours immediately following the fun.
If any of you met me and enjoyed our time together, know that this administration and their policy goals are targeting me specifically. I am a part of every single group they’ve singled out to hate. If you need a face to put to this issue, maybe it can be mine. It’s always easier to make sense of something when you have a personal connection to it.
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