Immigrant Archive Project

Some stories are impossible to hear from a distance. While interviewing this young woman, one thought stayed with me: “She could have been my daughter.”

Sharon Truzman’s story is a reflection on survival and resilience. I hope you’ll take a few moments to read and share it.

She Could Have Been My Daughter Part One: The Message She Thought Would Be Her Last

Before Tony Kanaan became an Indianapolis 500 champion, he was my neighbor and friend—the funny, generous guy I met at the gym.

In my latest essay, I look back on an Immigrant Archive Project interview Tony Kanaan sat down for years ago.

During that conversation, Tony shared the story of a promise he made as a young boy—one that would come to define his life’s journey.

It is a powerful reflection on determination, sacrifice, and the promises that shape who we become.

A Promise He Could Not Break The Childhood Vow That Shaped His Life

Freedom sometimes arrives as an idea. Sometimes it arrives as a door left unguarded, a tide moving in the right direction, or a stranger’s hand reaching down when you are too exhausted to save yourself.

In the third installment of Carlos Quintela’s remarkable story, “The Hand That Pulled Him From the Water,” Carlos risks everything to escape the forced-labor camps of Castro’s Cuba. His journey takes him through darkness, mangroves, dangerous waters, and the constant knowledge that capture could mean an automatic 15-year prison sentence.

But this is more than an escape story. It is a story about courage, preparation, human decency—and the moment an American Marine reached into the water and pulled a desperate young man toward freedom.

For Carlos, that hand represented more than rescue. It represented the promise of America as a safe harbor for those fleeing tyranny.

I hope you’ll read “The Hand That Pulled Him From the Water,” the third essay in my four-part series about Carlos Quintela’s extraordinary journey from repression to freedom.
https://theimmigrantarchive.substack.com/p/the-hand-that-pulled-him-from-the

In The Batons Were The Same Color, I continue the story of Carlos Quintela, whose life under Batista and then Castro revealed a painful truth: the language of liberation can sometimes disguise a new form of repression.

Carlos had already lived under one dictatorship. Then came Castro, promising justice, dignity, and freedom. But eventually, the disguise fell away.

The batons were the same color.

The second essay in my Carlos Quintela series is about Cuba, repression, disillusionment — and the courage to see clearly.

I hope you’ll read it.

The Batons Were the Same Color This is the second in a four-part essay series drawn from my oral history interview with Carlos Quintela, a former Cuban political prisoner, past Chair of the Amigos of the Cuban Heritage Collection, and one of the collection’s strongest advocates for preserving the oral histories of Cuba’s diss...

The Weight of Pretending is the first in a four-part series drawn from Tony Hernandez' oral history interview with Carlos Quintela, a former Cuban political prisoner and longtime champion of preserving exile stories.

What struck Tony most about Carlos’s story was something he said about prison. In one sense, he had lost his freedom. But in another, he had finally stopped living two lives. He no longer had to pretend. He no longer had to perform loyalty to a system he knew was built on fear, silence, and betrayal.

For so many of us, especially those who lived under dictatorship or grew up hearing those stories at the family table, this is not abstract history. It is memory. It is inheritance. It is part of the emotional weight many carried into exile — and part of what makes telling these stories so important.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read it.
https://theimmigrantarchive.substack.com/p/the-weight-of-pretending

A few weeks ago, I published a 60 year-old photograph as part of an essay promoting a new Television program we're producing called Inside the Cuban Heritage Collection.

The image caught the attention of Silvia Fonseca, who immediately recognized herself as the teenage girl in the photograph.

Until that moment, she had never seen the image.

Yesterday morning, Silvia visited the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami and discovered fifteen photographs documenting her family's arrival in the United States —photographs she never knew existed.

There were tears, laughter, and moments of profound gratitude.

The experience inspired my newest essay, The Girl in the Photograph.

It's a story about preservation, memory, the children of exiles, and the enduring power of our shared histories.

I hope you'll take a few minutes to read it.

The Girl in the Photograph A few weeks ago, I published an essay announcing Inside the Cuban Heritage Collection, a new television series inspired by the remarkable archives housed at the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection.

Some contributions to this country can’t be measured in GDP, tax receipts, or quarterly growth.

They live in quieter places — in sacrifice, in perseverance, in the belief that the next generation might live a little more freely than the last.

I wrote a new essay this morning about the contribution you can’t measure, and why it matters more than ever in how we think about immigration and belonging in America.

If you have a moment, I’d be honored if you gave it a read.

https://theimmigrantarchive.substack.com/p/the-contribution-you-cant-measure

Success isn’t the premiere. It isn’t the office. It isn’t the headlines.

When I interviewed Victoria Alonso, then President of Marvel Studios, she described success in a way I’ve never forgotten.

It’s choosing the harder road — long after you no longer have to.

And sometimes, it’s recognizing that something you've helped create, is the center of someone else’s universe.

My latest essay, The Left Turn, is now live on Substack.

The Left Turn On Discipline, Daughters, and the 8:05 That Defines Success

I once interviewed a man who built a billion-dollar life based on a seven-day plan.

Not five years. Not ten. Seven days.

His philosophy was born not in business—but in free fall.

His story goes live tomorrow.
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Immigrant children understand things early.
We learn to translate.
To adapt.
To carry responsibilities.

Today, I worry about them.
I worry about what they are seeing.
What they are hearing.

What they are beginning to understand about the country they call home.

What Immigrant Children Understand That’s me on the left.