The Immigration and Naturalization Service attempted to deport her, but their efforts were preempted by the 1957 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States that the Smith Act was unconstitutional.
[1] She married Paul Kusnitz in 1925, and moved to the Bronx where they had their first child, Nina, who would die of Hodgkin's disease in 1944.
In Los Angeles, Chernin began another round of tenant advocacy and other activist work, such as protesting the deportation of British communist writer Henry Carlisle.
[3] Chernin was sentenced five years in prison, and subpoenaed to identify conspirators to the House Un-American Committee, which she refused.
She was threatened with denaturalization and deportation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, but the process was abandoned for lack of evidence.