Mina Mahdavi, a 39-year-old solutions and cybersecurity engineer in California who has not been able to bring her mother from Iran to the U.S. because of the Trump administrations anti-Muslim travel ban, tried everything she could think of.

She applied for a waiver, called the consulate and her representatives in Congress, all without avail. Her applications were always rejected. Mahdavi was pregnant at the time, and her mother missed the birth of her first grandchild. Mahdavi began to feel hopeless that her mother wouldnt be there to help her raise her son. She tried her best to forget the idea entirely.

But on Wednesday, for the first time in years, Mahdavi began to reconsider her dreams. Once the ban was lifted, she and her husband broke out jumping and dancing, singing, Its gone, its gone. Bye, bye, its gone, referring to the ban.

The weight has been lifted, Mahdavi told HuffPost. I can breathe again.

Families across the globe watched anxiously as newly elected President Joe Biden took the first step in doing away with the policy that separated loved ones for years.

Just hours after his inauguration on Wednesday, Biden signed an executive order that formally revoked former President Donald Trumps travel ban, which barred entry to the U.S. from several Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and Africa, including Iran, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

The consequences of the ban were swift. Immediately after Trump signed it in 2017, it blocked refugees from entering the U.S. and tore families apart. Individuals impacted by the ban, like Mahdavi, said they lived in turmoil, not knowing if theyd ever see their relatives again.

While the new administration still has to deal with the backlog of cases and travel restrictions that are still in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration advocates and affected Muslim Americans celebrated the revocation of the ban and the possibility of reuniting with their families.