Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has returned home with an American who had been detained by Pyongyang since January.

Carter and Aijalon Gomes were greeted by friends and family gathered at Boston's Logan International Airport on Saturday.

Gomes hugged his mother while his family embraced the former president in appreciation.

Shortly before Gomes arrived in Boston, his family said in a statement that they thank the ex-president for traveling to North Korea to bring Gomes home. The family also thanked Pyongyang for caring for Gomes and for agreeing to release him on humanitarian grounds.

Gomes, who is a 30-year-old teacher from Boston, was detained by the North on January 25th for entering the country illegally. He was sentenced in April to eight years of hard labor and fined 700-thousand dollars.

Ahead of Gomes’s release, the State Department in a statement expressed appreciation for Carter’s humanitarian efforts and welcomed Pyongyang’s decision to set Gomes free.