Feds Snatch Mom Of 2 Outside Courthouse

By Laura Glesby, New Haven Independent

NEW HAVEN, CT — Federal immigration officials seized a 24-year-old Fair Haven woman down the street from the Elm Street courthouse on Monday morning.

“This is very painful for me. Like being dead,” her husband said through tears on Tuesday night.

A law enforcement official familiar with the arrest confirmed Tuesday that federal officers had taken the woman — an Ecuadorian immigrant and mother of two named Gladys Samanta Tentes-Pitiur — into custody on Monday morning.

She had been scheduled for a court hearing for her ongoing criminal case stemming from a May arrest on one felony count of risk of injury to a child. She has yet to enter a plea, and had been released on a $10,000 bond.

According to her husband, who wished to remain anonymous, Tentes-Pitiur had been arrested by city police after leaving their five-year-old child alone in their Fair Haven house while she brought their six-year-old child to school about five blocks away. According to the husband, the five-year-old was sleeping inside the house when she left — but he woke up and began to play with a bicycle outside. He said that police came and arrested the woman when she came back from bringing her older child to school.

The husband said that he works as a day laborer, seeking out work at a nearby Home Depot. He said his wife stayed at home with the kids.

When asked about the husband’s recounting of the arrest, Police Chief Karl Jacobson wrote in a text message, “I believe it was more than that. I know she was arrested for risk of injury more than once, but I don’t have any official records related to it.”

There was no warrant associated with the case, as police arrested Tentes-Pitiur immediately, and the New Haven Police Department did not provide a police report in time for this article.

"She Is Not OK"

According to the husband, Tentes-Pitiur’s most recent court date had to be rescheduled after she needed emergency surgery removing her gall bladder.

The new court date had been rescheduled for Monday at 10 a.m. The husband recalled driving his wife to the Elm Street courthouse. He said he dropped her off nearby, then drove no more than two traffic lights away while looking for parking.

Within those few minutes, three federal agents cornered Tentes-Pitiur down the block from the Elm Street courthouse, outside the New Haven Free Public Library’s Ives Branch.

At least one of the officers wore a uniform associated with ATF — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, an agency that has been collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In the next several hours, an anonymous witness posted on Reddit a photograph of the federal agents appearing to arrest the woman. The image circulated among immigrant rights activists.

“We need to start organizing the people,” said John Jairo Lugo, an activist with Unidad Latina en Acción. “They are kidnapping people.” He said he hopes to spread the word about a local hotline — (475) 323‑9413 — that witnesses can call to inform neighbors about ICE activity in the city.

As the photograph garnered attention online, the husband received a call from his wife. “She is not OK. She was crying,” he said in Spanish during an interview with the Independent Tuesday. He believes she was first brought to Hartford.

The next day, he heard from her again. She called him from an unfamiliar number with a Massachusetts area code, which led to a dull beeping sound when he tried to call her back. He recalled her saying that she didn’t know where she was; she said that agents had driven her five hours away and that they were three hours away from where she would ultimately be held in custody.

He said he doesn’t know if she has the medication she needs for her recovery from gall bladder surgery.

He said he explained the situation to their two kids. The oldest one is particularly heartbroken, but he tries to reassure them that she’ll be all right. The kids have been playing with their cousins, he said, to keep them distracted.

This isn’t the first time federal immigration officials have arrested a New Haven mom in recent weeks. Click hereto read about ski-masked ICE agents boxing in and taking away another mom, 37-year-old Nancy Martinez, in front of her two kids in the Hill.

From Ecuador To New Haven

The couple had known each other for about a decade, according to Tentes-Pitiur’s husband. They met in their home country of Ecuador. He said he has been in New Haven for about two years, while his wife has been here for over a year.

He said they left Ecuador, with the goal of seeking asylum, due to persecution partly related to the fact that their family is part of the Shuar Indigenous people. The husband said they fled after being threatened and fearing for their safety.

“I don’t want her to be deported,” he said. “We are people who are discriminated against.”

It took the husband four months to walk across five countries — through Colombia, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico — until finally reaching the United States.

His wife followed him with their two kids in tow. On their way through Mexico, the husband said, the trio was kidnapped by a criminal group seeking to extort the family for money, an increasingly common occurrence targeting migrants traveling through Mexico.

The kidnappers held Tentes-Pitiur and her kids in a vacant house, the husband said. “They tortured me psychologically,” he said, crying as he recalled how the kidnappers sought a ransom he wasn’t able to pay. Eventually, he said, his wife was able to escape with their kids through a hole in the house. She pedaled away with them on a single bike, he said, and continued the journey to New Haven.

“I want to be together with her here,” he said.

Norma Rodríguez Reyes and Everangelys Viruet contributed to this report.

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