The series Cases, 1926-1970s, makes up the bulk of the collection and consists of two subseries: Multiple Cases and Individual Cases. Multiple Cases includes correspondence, application forms, newspaper clippings, and other material regarding cases that involved several individuals, groups of individuals, or organizations. Among the groups documented are sailors of various nationalities who wished to emigrate to the United States, four deportees who went on a hunger strike while being detained at Ellis Island to protest conditions there, and members of the International Workers Order and International Labor Defense. Also included are statistics of cases handled by the Committee in the 1930s and 1940s. These cases are arranged alphabetically by name of organization or group.
Individual Cases consists of letters, application forms, newspaper clippings, and other material relating to persons who requested assistance from the Committee in obtaining citizenship or resisting deportation for illegal entry or for political activities. The majority of these files contain only a few items of routine correspondence, although some contain interesting autobiographical statements. However, a number of deportation cases lasted for years and attracted considerable notoriety. These cases are well documented through court records, correspondence, news releases, fliers, and newspaper clippings.
The case of Harry (Kwong Hai) Chew, for example, upheld the right of legal resident aliens to protection under the Constitution. Chew, a native of China and legal resident of the United States, was employed as chief steward on an American vessel in 1950. When the ship returned to the United States, Chew was excluded and sent to Ellis Island, where he was detained for two years without a hearing and without notice of the charges against him. Upon appeal of his case, the Supreme Court decided that such detention was unlawful. Chew was then excluded by the Immigration and Naturalization Service on the charge that he had been a member of the Communist Party in the 1940s. In 1965, however, he was readmitted as a legal resident alien because the Immigration and Naturalization Service had failed to prove that Chew had had a "meaningful association" with the Communist Party. There is extensive documentation of the Chew case in the Individual Cases subseries.
A noteworthy case is that of Cedric Belfrage, a British citizen with permanent resident status in the United States, who was a founder and editor of the progressive newspaper, the National Guardian. Belfrage refused to answer questions about his personal opinions and associations before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in May, 1953. Belfrage was arrested and held at Ellis Island under the Walter-McCarran Act at the request of Joseph McCarthy while his alien status was being investigated.
Another valuable source of information on political and labor organizations is the exhibits produced for court cases of persons facing deportation. The Andrew Dmytryshyn file, for example, includes considerable information about the International Workers Order. William Lahtinen's case file contains much information about Finnish-American political organizations, workers' cooperatives and the Communist Party, as well as translations of a few issues of Finnish-American newspapers of the 1930s.
While most of the material relating to cases handled by the Committee is contained in these case files, there is rich correspondence by some of these individuals in the Correspondence series, and general information about the progress of specific cases in the news releases and other publications in the Publicity/Activities