New Delhi, July 24 -- Carlos Uzcategui 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.

Uzcategui 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," Uzcategui, 33, said. "Every day, I woke up looking at the ...