The following section explores the sites of anti-immigration (and in particular, anti "anchor baby") protests in California, reflecting an atmosphere of hostility towards immigrants of color, a fear of undocumented people putting down an "anchor" on American soil, and an impulse towards reproductive control.
Many of the sentiments in these protests reflect the fiction that undocumented people are stealing resources from the United States, even though emergency medical care, including childbirth, is legally guaranteed to undocumented people in California. The traumatic effects of this narrative are deep. In Ofelia's own interview, she expressed a strong feeling of "taking" resources that were "not her own," even though California law affirms her right to emergency care and she obtained Medical legally.
