After 135 Days In ICE Detention, A Mom Wins Asylum — & Comes Home

By Laura Glesby, New Haven Independent

NEW HAVEN, CT — A 7-year-old boy barreled into his mother’s arms on the sidewalk outside Fair Haven School on the day before Thanksgiving.

His 6-year-old brother ambled around, unable to process, until his mom pulled him into the hug. She held them both and cried.

The mother, Gladys Tentes-Pitiur, had come home after nearly five months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Louisiana.

In those five months, she lived through countless sleepless nights in the same crowded room. She heard the yells of guards and microwave-line fights. She witnessed person after person lose hope. She held onto intermittent, costly phone calls with her children. She helped her lawyer amass evidence that she’d been violently persecuted in Ecuador. To pass the time, she made jewelry out of plastic bags.

Then, in an increasingly rare outcome, a judge granted her asylum.

Thirty days after that decision, on Nov. 19, Tentes-Pitiur was free. She was about to turn 25 years old. She rode three buses back to New Haven in an all-white detention uniform.

She had survived persecution in Ecuador targeting her as an Indigenous Shuar woman. She and her lawyer were able to convince a judge that she had come to the United States because she was fleeing life-threatening danger.

“This really does save her life,” said Tentes-Pitiur’s lawyer, Brenda Wylie. “She has been through an unspeakable amount of violence. That violence followed her here to the United States. She’s been trying to escape it since she was 15. At points when she thought she had, it found her.”

“This really is the first time in 10 years where she’s gonna be able to find some safety,” said Wylie, who noted that she hasn’t had any other clients successfully obtain asylum status in 2025. “Granting an asylum case for an immigration judge right now is a very bold act.”

Tentes-Pitiur remembers that on their first night reunited, her 6-year-old asked if the police were going to take her away again.

She remembers telling him no, she has asylum, she’ll be able to stay.

“Me dijo, ‘No te creo. Tú te vas a ir [en la] noche,’” Tentes-Pitiur said. He told me, ‘I don’t believe you. You’re going to leave tonight.’

She remembers the two boys refusing to leave her bed that night — the first of many signs of separation anxiety now that their mom is back home.

“Y los dos se acostaron ahí, los dos. Ninguno de los dos se quería mover,” she said. And the two of them lay down there, the two of them. Neither of them wanted to move.

Detained Outside Court

Six months earlier, Tentes-Pitiur’s 6-year-old decided to try riding his new bike out on the street outside their home in Fair Haven. A neighbor saw him riding alone, and called the police — setting off a cascade of events that led to Tentes-Pitiur’s ICE detention.

The night before, according to Tentes-Pitiur, she stayed up late working, having started a new job cleaning a newly constructed house. That Monday morning, Tentes-Pitiur overslept. She woke up and realized that her 7-year-old son was already late to summer school blocks away, she recalled. So she bolted out of bed to walk him over.

Her husband wasn’t home. Her younger son was still sleeping. Tentes-Pitiur recalled wondering if she should wake the 6-year-old up or let him sleep. She decided to leave him, believing that he’d still sleeping by the time she came back from the school 10 minutes away.

By then, Tentes-Pitiur had saved her children’s lives more than once.

She did not wish to speak publicly about the violence she faced in Ecuador, noting that she still has family living there. She crossed seven countries over the course of three months with her two children, who were scarcely older than toddlers. According to Tentes-Pitiur, the three of them traveled by a combination of walking, riding buses and cars pulled by horses, and hopping on motorcycle taxis.

Along the way in Mexico, Tentes-Pitiur recounted, members of a cartel kidnapped them — a common extortion method that often targets migrants heading to the United States. The kidnappers held them hostage for a month, Tentes-Pitiur said, seeking ransoms of thousands of dollars for each of them.

Tentes-Pitiur remembered being kept in a house that was partially under construction. The top two floors of the three-story house were unfinished, she said, while she and her kids were held on the ground floor. Her family couldn’t afford to pay the ransom.

She saw an opportunity to escape one day when the men in charge of guarding her stepped outside. She discovered a hole in a half-constructed wall that led to someone else’s house, and she shepherded her kids through the wall. The residents of the other house had no idea about the kidnapping next door, she said, and they helped her escape.

Gladys and her children arrived in New Haven, the city where her husband lived, the day after Thanksgiving on Nov. 24, 2023.

Nearly a year and a half had passed when, in May 2025, she decided to let her youngest child sleep at home while taking her 7-year-old to school.

But the 6-year-old woke up. He took the bike outside. And by the time Tentes-Pitiur came home, police were at her house.

As documented in a police report, New Haven police officers arrested her on the scene. They placed her in “double locked hand cuffs,” searched her, and transported her to police headquarters at 1 Union Ave.

She was charged with “risk of injury to a child.”

Tentes-Pitiur said that she’d hoped to use the money she’d earned cleaning the night before to pay for an immigration lawyer to help her with her asylum claim. Instead, she used it to post bond for the arrest.

A month and a half later, on July 7, she arrived at the Elm Street courthouse for a scheduled court appearance related to the arrest.

Before she could step inside, immigration officials captured her by the courthouse steps. They had targeted her specifically.

Tentes-Pitiur remembered seeing pedestrians take photos of the arrest. One of those photos ended up on Reddit, and eventually in this newspaper. The local immigrant rights advocacy organization Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA) reached out to the family and connected them to a lawyer.

In the meantime, ICE took Tentes-Pitiur to a New Hampshire facility. Soon, they transferred her to the privately operated Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana.

In a comment to the Independent about Tentes-Pitiur’s detention that week, ICE spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin cited her arrest for “risking injury to a child.”

“We are continuing to go after the worst of the worst,” McLaughlin wrote, “including child abusers.”

135 Days In Detention

Richwood Correctional Center reminded Tentes-Pitiur of an asylum. The walls were all white, she said, and the detainees wore all-white uniforms.

“Yo no estaba preparada para todo lo que me tocaba enfrentar,” she said. I wasn’t prepared for everything that I had to face.

She estimated being kept in a large room with about 125 women. They slept in bunk beds, which ranged from two to three levels high.

Many of the women had been detained by ICE while attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Since Tentes-Pitiur had lived in New Haven for about a year prior to her detention, some of the other women would ask her about what life was like in the United States. She would tell them that she had lived in a nice place, but that the president was erratic.

In a USA Today report from August, women detained at Richwood said they often went hungry due to small portions and occasionally rancid food from the kitchen. Tentes-Pitiur said that instant ramen from the commissary was a common source of food for her and her fellow detainees.

There were only two microwaves for the entire group of 125, she said. She recalled that fights would break out over who could use the microwave first. Sometimes, people would fight over who could use the bathroom. There was no privacy while using the toilet or showering, she said.

It was hard to sleep, Tentes-Pitiur said. Some people had nightmares. One woman would scratch herself and bark in the night, as if imitating a dog. No one wanted to help the woman bathe, Tentes-Pitiur said, because they were afraid of her.

Many women grew despondent. Some had been detained for eight months to a year, according to Tentes-Pitiur.

Meanwhile, as newcomers arrived, they would tell their own stories. “Y más nosotros nos podíamos peor de lo que ya estábamos,” Tentes-Pitiur said. And we would feel even worse than we already did.

The women were able to go outside to a patio for an hour a day. Some would play games. Others would lay on the ground and talk to one another.

While some women worked in the library or kitchen, Tentes-Pitiur decided not to try and get a job. She said she would hear some of the guards yelling at the women. She didn’t understand much English, and she didn’t want to be treated poorly, she said. (An ICE representative did not respond to questions from the Independent in time for the publication of this story.)

Every so often, she was able to hear her children’s voices through phone calls. The calls were costly, and she depended on her husband to pick up the phone when she called. She said that for a month and a half out of her nearly five months in detention, she wasn’t able to reach them directly. During that period, she received phone updates about how her children seemed to be faring through other family members and neighbors. She worried about their safety.

To distract herself, Tentes-Pitiur recalled, she sketched cartoon characters from memory, such as the Disney alien Stitch, and made bracelets out of clear plastic bags.

“She Really Won This Case For Herself”

As Tentes-Pitiur adjusted to detention, her lawyer, Wylie, set to work on her asylum case.

Wylie knew from the start that it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Asylum has always been difficult,” she said. “Asylum has become incredibly difficult under this administration.”

Since his first day of his second presidential term, Donald Trump has moved to effectively shut down asylum proceedings at the border (a contested policy that the Supreme Court has agreed to review) while severely restricting pathways to asylum for those already in the United States.

According to data from TRAC, Louisiana immigration courts closed 2,378 cases for migrants in detention this past August — only 74 of which resulted in asylum or another form of relief.

In order to avoid deportation and obtain asylum through the court system, Tentes-Pitiur needed to testify directly to a judge about her experiences, on top of submitting a written narrative attesting to the danger she faced in Ecuador. And Wylie needed to gather as much evidence as possible to back up Tentes-Pitiur’s claims.

“We had a really difficult time just getting access to her,” Wylie recalled.

Wylie said she’d filed a formal appearance in the court system as Tentes-Pitiur’s lawyer at the end of August, but she couldn’t get in touch with her own client until Sept. 11. Tentes-Pitiur was all the way in Louisiana, at a crowded facility where “there are a lot of attorneys from out of state trying to get access to their clients,” Wylie said.

When Wylie finally was able to reach Tentes-Pitiur, ICE allotted them a maximum of 30 minutes a day on the phone — a time frame that struck Wylie as far too short for the conversations about traumatic memories they would need to have. “When you start to actually get into a groove, you get cut short,” Wylie said.

Early on, “we had to spend a couple of our sessions discussing her concern for her kids, as opposed to getting into the preparation of her asylum application,” Wylie recalled. “Her concern was always her kids.” Wylie reached out to Tentes-Pitiur’s sister to get updates about the children, which she would pass along to Tentes-Pitiur.

“Every asylum case in particular takes a tremendous amount of work,” said Wylie. “This was a community-wide effort.” Tentes-Pitiur’s siblings helped to gather evidence. ULA held fundraisers on her behalf, raising about $10,000 to help take care of expenses related to her detention and the fallout on her family. “We had someone who was translating documents through the night, because we had a really short filing deadline,” Wylie recalled.

Wylie fought in court to obtain access to Tentes-Pitiur’s cell phone, which ICE had seized, and which she believed contained important evidence. Access to the phone was never granted, which Wylie viewed as “a violation of due process.” The federal government was detaining Tentes-Pitiur while withholding a potential source of evidence pertaining to the case for her freedom.

Still, even without the phone, “we did have a fair amount of corroborating evidence in her case,” said Wylie.

She put together arguments for asylum based on both the persecution that Tentes-Pitiur faced in Ecuador and domestic violence that she had experienced in the United States. (She did not wish to publicly share details about the domestic violence due to an ongoing legal case.)

The latter prong of the case, citing domestic violence, was admittedly a long shot, according to Wylie. In July, shortly after Tentes-Pitiur was detained, the Board of Immigration Appeals within Trump’s Justice Department effectively decided that gender-based violence is no longer sufficient grounds to claim asylum in the United States.

Indeed, on Oct. 17, the judge in Tentes-Pitiur’s case denied the argument that her experiences as a victim of domestic violence were sufficient grounds for asylum. But he officially granted Tentes-Pitiur asylum based on the violence she experienced in Ecuador.

At the Oct. 17 hearing, an attorney for the federal government reserved the right to appeal the decision, meaning that Tentes-Pitiur would have to stay in detention at least through the 30-day appeal window granted to the federal government.

But the appeal was never filed. Which meant that on Nov. 17, Tentes-Pitiur was free.

In the end, “the reason we won this case is because Gladys is an incredibly candid and warm person,” said Wylie, “who despite all of the trauma that she’s experienced was still able to articulate everything that’s happened to her very clearly to the judge.”

So many cases rest on the ability of the asylum seeker to testify about harrowing life experiences in a way that moves a judge, Wylie said. “She really won this case for herself.”

The Bus Ride Home

Tentes-Pitiur left the ICE detention center with a phone that wouldn’t work and no clothes of her own. ULA had sent her bus tickets back to New Haven. She wore her white detention center uniform the entire way home.

Tentes-Pitiur first boarded a bus from Louisiana to Baltimore. When she arrived at Baltimore, however, she had missed the connection that would take her to New Haven. She sought help from an employee at the station’s ticket counter, who found alternate tickets home with a transfer in New York City.

According to Tentes-Pitiur, it took a total of three days for her to get back to New Haven. The entire time, she had no appetite. She only wanted to drink water; she’d never liked the taste of the tap water in the detention center.

She finally arrived at Union Station in New Haven on Nov. 21. John Lugo, ULA’s lead organizer, picked her up from the station and brought her to a sibling’s home in Danbury.

All this time, Tentes-Pitiur hadn’t told her children that she was coming home. She was concerned that if they knew her arrival date, word might get back to someone she didn’t feel safe around.

A few days after settling in, Tentes-Pitiur arrived at Fair Haven School around pick-up time to see her children.

She waited outside on the sidewalk for her two boys to walk outside.

“Hold Onto Hope”

Now, Tentes-Pitiur is working on piecing a new life together in New Haven. A life defined this time by a day-to-day sense of safety in her home and in the world. A life made possible by her ability to walk outside – wherever she wants, for as long as she wants – with a layer of protection from her new legal status.

Tentes-Pitiur recalled that when she first arrived in New Haven in November 2023, she wasn’t comfortable. Everything was unfamiliar. After a harrowing journey, she was afraid of other people. Now, she said, she likes New Haven. She prefers the city to Danbury. She’s currently staying with an ULA volunteer in the city, while searching for an apartment she can afford. She hopes to be able to stay in New Haven, where her eldest goes to school.

Since returning home, she’s spent much of her time with ULA members, getting to know the people who worked to get her out of detention. “It’s been a very intense road with this particular case,” Lugo reflected. “Seeing her free is a unique feeling. We’re very happy.”

“There’s so many bad stories in Unidad Latina these days,” Lugo added. “Just having one good story, something positive — that proves that the job that we’re doing is worth it.”

Tentes-Pitiur said she wants the people reading about her story to remember those who still remain in ICE detention.

“Sé que hay muchas familias que están pasando por lo mismo también,” she said. I know there are many families going through the same thing.

She urged anyone at risk of being detained by ICE to gather all the evidence and documentation they might need for court ahead of time. She encouraged them to connect with organizations that will fight for them, “para que no tengan la desesperación que yo tuve cuando estuve adentro.” So that they don’t experience the desperation I felt when I was inside.

Tentes-Pitiur also wants her story to be a reminder for those in detention not to lose hope.

She is a living example, she said, of someone who was detained for a long time — from July 7 to Nov. 19 — and eventually won her freedom.

“Entonces, que puedan agarrar esa esperanza de tener, esa fuerza de seguir luchando,” she said. I hope they can hold onto that hope, that strength to keep fighting.

The New Haven Independent is a not-for-profit public-interest daily news site founded in 2005.