President Donald Trump has painted refugees as “bad dudes” with “bad intentions.” In reality, they are largely women, children and families fleeing desperate situations in their home countries.

A new exhibit, titled “Refuge,” brings this juxtaposition to light by showcasing the refugee children who stand to lose the most from Trump’s policies.

Visual artist Claire Salvo conceptualized the project last fall as a way to de-politicize the conversation around refugee resettlement. In particular, she wanted to highlight the fact that more than half of the world’s refugees are children, and many of them have only known life inside a refugee camp.

“I wanted to remove the political aspect and just make it human,” Salvo told The Huffington Post. “There’s something about kids everyone can relate to. Everyone can agree it’s not a child’s choice ― it’s no one’s choice ― to be a refugee. They have no say in the matter.”

Salvo worked with her local branch of Church World Service, a refugee aid organization, to locate families that would be interested in participating. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the artist lives, it wasn’t hard.

Lancaster is known for being “America’s refugee capital.” The city takes in roughly 20 times more refugees per capita than any other city in the U.S. In 2016, Church World Service Lancaster helped resettle more than 400 refugees, nearly half of whom were children under the age of 18.

“These are the people that President Trump wants to close our doors to. They are some of the world’s most vulnerable people,” Stephanie Gromek, community resource coordinator for Church World Service Lancaster, told HuffPost.

The organization connected Salvo with three families who expressed interest in participating, and the artist spent the last few months photographing, interviewing and sketching fifteen children from the families. Salvo shot the photographs on an iPhone and did the drawings with charcoal. She’ll be auctioning the pieces off starting in May, and a portion of the proceeds will be donated back to the participating families, the artist said.

All three of the families arrived in the U.S. speaking only their native language and “with little more than clothes on their back,” said Gromek.

One was a Muslim family from Somalia ― one of the banned countries included on Trump’s initial refugee order ― who just arrived in the U.S. in December. The other two families are related and living under one roof. They hail from Ethiopia and are members of the Anuak tribe, a persecuted ethnic minority.

The process of resettlement is an arduous one. Refugees recommended for resettlement in the U.S. by the U.N. undergo a stringent, two-year long vetting process that includes various security and medical clearances as well as cultural orientation.

Once they’re cleared for the journey, refugees have their tickets and travel booked through the International Organization for Migration on loan with no interest charged.

“It’s their first line of credit once they get into the U.S., and they’re expected to pay that travel loan back,” Gromek said. “It’s a way for them to establish themselves with credit.”

But Gromek added it can take years for refugees to pay back the loan, especially if they have a large family.

“Refugees are some of the hardest working people I’ve ever met,” Salvo said. “Many are supporting families of upwards of ten people on minimum wage, but they’re just so grateful to be here.”

During her interviews with the families, Salvo said she asked them: “What’s your greatest hope for life in America.” The language barrier made it difficult for her to get across the broader scope of the question, Salvo said. But one of the mothers, named Faduma, was able to communicate that what she wanted most was a washer and dryer.

One day, Salvo was leaving her house when she saw that a neighbor had left a washer out on the curb. The photographer said she called a friend to help her lift the washer into her car, and she drove it down to the CWS office with a note that it was for Faduma.

“The things many refugees want are so basic,” Salvo said, “and they’re things we take for granted, like not having to walk a mile to laundromat.”

Refugee children have their own basic tasks to attend to once they arrive in the U.S., Gromek said. These include learning English, getting various immunizations and enrolling in school. Within a month, most refugee children have started their classes and are on their way to becoming everyday American kids.

“Children are resilient in their own right, and refugee children are even more so I believe because they’ve been through so much,” Gromek told HuffPost. “They end up thriving.”

LOS ANGELES ― A federal judge who sits on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is set to rule on a block of President Donald Trump’s refugee ban, came to the United States as a refugee when he was a boy.

Alex Kozinski, one of the most well-respected judges on the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, fled with his parents, Moses and Sabine, from communist Romania in 1962. Kozinski has spoken publicly about his immigration experience for years, even joking that he went from being a committed communist as a boy to an “instant capitalist” after his first trip outside of the Iron Curtain to Vienna ― on his way to the United States ― where he was introduced to “bubble gum, chocolate and bananas.”

But his journey came full circle on Monday when HIAS ― a refugee agency that has been assisting Jews and others fleeing persecution since 1881 ― filed a legal brief with the 9th Circuit in strong opposition to Trump’s travel ban. HIAS was the same group that helped to resettle the Kozinski family, eventually helping them get all the way to the United States.

Until contacted by The Huffington Post, HIAS officials were unaware that one of the children it helped decades ago was now serving on the court to which it was appealing.

Officials at HIAS searched their records and found official documentation of arrival for the Kozinski family. HIAS provided it to The Huffington Post, and it is printed here with the permission of Judge Kozinski.

The Kozinski family arrived in Baltimore in late October 1962. Alex was just 12, Moses was 47 and Sabine 43.

“[HIAS] was very generous and kind to us in all respects,” Kozinski told The Huffington Post of his journey to America. Kozinski recalled that the paperwork, all arranged and prepared by HIAS, was completed in Vienna around 1962. The agency then supported the Kozinskis while Moses and Sabine sought employment.

“Then we came to the U.S. on a Sabena four-propeller airliner ― it took about 18 hours to cross the Atlantic, with one stop somewhere in Newfoundland,” Kozinski said. The Kozinskis landed in New York, where they passed through customs, like so many immigrants before them and after them. They briefly settled in Baltimore, where HIAS continued to support the family until Moses and Sabine found steady work.

“Our caseworker was named Mrs. Friedman,” Kozinski said. “I remember her quite well. She smoked Parliaments.”

After about five years in Baltimore, the Kozinskis moved to California in search of warmer weather. They’d settle in the Los Angeles area, where Moses would open a grocery store and Alex would eventually graduate from UCLA’s law school. After several years of private practice and then clerking for Supreme Court Justices Warren Burger and Anthony Kennedy (while Kennedy was appointed to the 9th Circuit), President Ronald Reagan appointed Kozinski first to U.S. Claims Court and then, in 1985, to the 9th Circuit.

That HIAS helped Kozinski’s family escape totalitarianism doesn’t disqualify him from ruling on the case. “They’re an amicus, not a party, and any association I had with them ended half a century ago,” Kozinski said. (Indeed, judges routinely rule on cases that involve organizations they previously had involvement with. But Kozinski isn’t assigned to the 9th Circuit motions panel of three judges who will hear the case. The panel consists of William C. Canby Jr., Michelle Friedland and Richard Clifton. As the case progresses, the court may grant a hearing before an 11-judge panel.)

Along the way, Kozinski may or may not get to express his views on the ultimate legality of Trump’s travel ban. But even if he doesn’t, the judge has already given the public a taste of how he feels about the federal government’s power over immigration ― and how it can have a profound effect no matter who is in power.

“We may soon find ourselves with new conflicts between the President and the states,” Kozinski wrote last week in an impassioned dissent to an order by the full 9th Circuit declining to hear a challenge by the state of Arizona to President Barack Obama’s policy aimed at helping young undocumented immigrants. His colleagues had declined to take up the case again, leaving in place a ruling that more or less forces Arizona to grant driver’s licenses to those covered by the policy.

But that result, under the Constitution, left Kozinski uneasy ― perhaps because of who is now the nation’s chief executive.

“Executive power favors the party, or perhaps simply the person, who wields it,” Kozinski warned his own court. “That power is the forbidden fruit of our politics, irresistible to those who possess it and reviled by those who don’t. Clear and stable structural rules are the bulwark against that power, which shifts with the sudden vagaries of our politics. In its haste to find a doctrine that can protect the policies of the present, our circuit should remember the old warning: May all your dreams come true.”

Trump’s controversial executive order temporarily bans all refugees and indefinitely bars Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. The order also suspends travel to the U.S. by citizens of seven countries: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. The policy, which covers 200 million people, sparked chaos and protests at many U.S. airports last week as travelers from the targeted countries were detained and lawyers were denied access to the detainees.

The order was soon challenged in court by multiple states. On Friday, a nationwide restraining order was issued by U.S. District Judge James Robart, who ruled that the order was likely to cause immediate and irreparable harm to the states of Washington and Minnesota to education, business, family relations and the freedom to travel. Over the weekend, the Justice Department filed an appeal to immediately restore the ban, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit denied that request. The appeals court is now preparing to hear full arguments in the case.

On Monday, HIAS filed in support of the stay of the executive order. HIAS argued that Trump’s executive order has “fractured many refugee families” and “risks the lives of many who relied on the promises of the United States when they received their visas.” The order, HIAS argues, closes the door to avoiding “immense dangers” they currently face in their home countries.

Trump has made a habit of smearing the judicial system and specifically attacking judges who challenge his authority or who issue rulings that unravel his plans. Over the weekend Trump blasted U.S. District Judge James Robart after he issued a temporary restraining order in Seattle last week, blocking Trump’s immigration order for the time being.

As a candidate, Trump also attacked Gonzalo Curiel, a federal judge who presided over lawsuits against Trump University. Trump accused the judge of an “absolute conflict” in the case because of the judge’s Mexican heritage. He repeatedly referred to Curiel as “Mexican” and said he couldn’t be an impartial judge because of Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the Mexican border. Curiel is a U.S. citizen, born in Indiana.

Kozinski is American, too.

CORRECTION: This article previously suggested that Kozinski was the only former refugee on the 9th Circuit. Judge Jacqueline Nguyen is also a former refugee.