After the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the committee protected fighters against Francisco Franco who could not (re-)enter the United States legally, e.g., American members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
[3] During the early Cold War, the US federal government increased its efforts to deport foreign born trade unionists and Communists; it also attacked the committee itself.
In 1950, Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. asked the Subversive Activities Control Board to make the committee register as a Communist front.
Although also in 1957, the United States Supreme Court reversed deportation of Charles Rowoldt based on membership in the Communist Party, the committee gave up direct legal defense of foreign born to focus on public opinion and legislation, e.g., revision or repeal of the McCarran-Walter Act.
It campaigned to establish a statute of limitation, to eliminate supervisory parole, and to defend the free speech and association of foreign born.
[3] On April 26, 1965, the United States Supreme Court in American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, Petitioner, v. Subversive Activities Control Board affirmed an order of the Subversive Activities Control Board requiring that the committee, represented by Joseph Forer, must register as a 'Communist-front' organization.
[1] The American Committee for Protection of the Foreign Born had various subcommittees: In 1950, the Internal Security Act listed as a "subversive" "Communist-front" organization.
[10] Members or individuals affiliated with the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born included: Albert Einstein, Bela Lugosi, Rex Stout, Emily Balch,[4] Donald Ogden Stewart, Edward G. Robinson, Maurice Hindus, Max Lerner, Ella Winter, Maxim Kopf, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Leo Krzycki, Michael Quill, Vito Marcantonio, Canada Lee, Louis B. Boudin, Henrietta Buckmaster, Morris Carnovsky, Aaron Copland, Kyle Crichton, Joseph Curran, Abram Flaxer, Langston Hughes, Fredric March (and Florence Eldridge), Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Paul Robeson, Orson Welles, Max Yergan, Guy Endore, Reid Robinson, Theodore Dreiser, Franz Boas, Sidney Hillman, Rockwell Kent, Walter Rautenstrauch, Harry F. Ward, Thomas Addis, Carol King, George Seldes, Frederick V. Field, Martha Dodd, Muriel Draper, Alexander Meiklejohn, Genevieve Taggard, Art Young, Louis Adamic, and George Albert Coe[1][11] Joseph Freeman (writer) a member,[12] as wel Mady Christians.