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Car­los Uzcátegui tight­ly hugged his sob­bing wife and step­daugh­ter on Wednes­day as the morn­ing fog in west­ern Venezuela lift­ed. The fam­i­ly’s first em­brace in more than a year fi­nal­ly con­vinced him that his night­mare in­side a prison in El Sal­vador was over.

Uzcátegui was among the mi­grants be­ing re­unit­ed with loved ones af­ter four months in prison in El Sal­vador, where the U.S. gov­ern­ment trans­ferred them -- ac­cus­ing them of be­ing mem­bers of a for­eign gang in the U.S. il­le­gal­ly -- in one of its bold­est moves to crack down on im­mi­gra­tion.

“Every day, we asked God for the bless­ing of free­ing us from there so that we could be here with fam­i­ly, with my loved ones,” Uzcátegui, 33, said. “Every day, I woke up look­ing at the bars, wish­ing I wasn’t there.”