‘That Hits Home’

Miguel Fernandez and his family were having dinner at home in Manzanillo, Cuba, when militia men — Fidel’s men — drove up.

They had Russian-made submachine guns, and, after entering, they told the Fernandezes to get out. Miguel, 12 at the time, and his father, mother, and sister, 10, did as they were told. They got into the back of a truck, were driven to an airport, and flown to Mexico City.

It was Christmas Eve 1964.

The crime? Fernandez’s father, Mario Antonio, was a businessman in Castro’s Communist regime, an entrepreneur who owned sandwich shops, a bar, and a jukebox company. Mario Antonio had also applied for a passport, which the government frowned upon.

Today Fernandez is a billionaire who lives in Coral Gables, Fla., and runs a private-equity firm. But even now when he sees armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers storming houses and workplaces searching for undocumented immigrants, he sees himself. He sees his family.

“That hits home,” he says. On his estate, Fernandez prominently features a boat that refugees used to escape Cuba and come to America.

Like many Cuban-Americans who abhor the island country’s Communist government, Fernandez, 66, has always supported Republicans, including with big campaign contributions.

He left the party after Donald Trump ran and won on a presidential platform to deport the millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Fernandez, who previously had chiefly donated to health, education, and children’s causes, is now backing efforts to protect the undocumented.

His Immigration Partnership and Coalition Fund — or Impac Fund — plans to raise $5 million to support organizations that provide legal counsel for people in the U.S. immigration system. In 2017, he kicked things off by donating $500,000 each to Catholic Legal Services and Americans for Immigrant Justice, two groups that advocate for immigrants.

The Impac Fund has raised about $2 million this year for those organizations and other efforts, he says. Fernandez has pledged to match about $500,000 of what’s been raised in 2018.

(Fernandez will continue to fund electoral politics, too: This year, he put $5 million into a new political committee that will support candidates who believe that undocumented immigrants should be given an opportunity to gain legal status or become citizens.)

He believes many politicians have forgotten their families’ origin stories.

“There seems to be a source of power in Washington that wants to diminish the contribution or erase the history of what even their own ancestors have done for themselves and for this country,” he says. “It’s a difficult time we’re living through.”

Education Donor

Fernandez’s own story starts with his family’s ouster from Cuba. Once they secured U.S. visas, they settled in New York, where he went to high school. After briefly attending college at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and then serving in the Army, he moved to Florida in 1975.

He enrolled at Miami Dade College but dropped out and sold health insurance for a few years. He then started a series of health-care related companies. Today, he chairs a private-equity firm that invests in new ventures in the field.

Before 2016, Fernandez’s philanthropy wasn’t focused on immigration. He and his family have donated close to $145 million over 20 years to schools and universities, children’s hospitals, and educational projects, among other things.

Going forward, giving to educational institutions and programs will be his family foundation’s main focus, Fernandez says. He believes education is vital to people’s success and, most importantly, their character and integrity. “The values that were instilled in me while I was in school, those are part of me,” Fernandez says. “And those I can pass on.”

Fernandez, a devout Catholic, contributes often to his alma mater, Xavier High School, an all-boys Jesuit institution in Manhattan — including $5 million for an auditorium that opened in 2017. He’s also made significant donations to Florida Catholic schools that his daughter and three oldest sons — now grown — attended. He says he’s also finalizing a big gift to Loyola University Maryland, a Jesuit college in Baltimore, where he serves as a board member. The money will fund scholarships and a new building, Fernandez says.

Backing Cuba

Fernandez hasn’t forgotten about his home country. He supports rapprochement with the communist regime there, believing that improved relations are best for the United States and Cuba.

Several years ago, Fernandez and other Cuban-Americans founded the Cuba Emprende Foundation, which supports business training offered by the Catholic Church in the country. His family foundation donated $75,000 to the project in 2015 and 2016, and he’s given other gifts privately, he says.

Though the Cuba Emprende Foundation is a philanthropic venture, Fernandez talks about it chiefly in political terms. He and its other leaders want to help Cubans become independent of the communist government. Fernandez also hopes that policy makers in America see an economically strong Cuba as beneficial to the United States.

What connects all this philanthropy is Fernandez’s Catholic belief in giving back and his faith that good things can happen when individuals have the opportunity to succeed. To Fernandez, his life story is a classic example of that.

Today, with Donald Trump ushering in a new era of anti-immigration sentiment, he worries that undocumented immigrants are losing the opportunity to advance or become part of society.

Fernandez says: “What bothers me is when people get in the way” of others’ opportunity.