Gladys Tentes-Pitiur, an Indigenous Shuar woman from Ecuador, was detained by ICE for 135 days at Richwood Correctional Center in Louisiana after being arrested outside a courthouse in New Haven on July 7, 2025. She had fled Ecuador due to persecution and traveled through seven countries with her two young sons, surviving cartel kidnapping in Mexico before arriving in New Haven in November 2023. After an immigration judge granted her asylum on October 17, 2025, citing violence she had fled since age 15, she was released on November 19 and reunited with her sons, ages 6 and 7, outside their Fair Haven school the day before Thanksgiving. Her lawyer, Brenda Wylie, said the case was the only successful asylum grant her office achieved in 2025, and Tentes-Pitiur recalled her younger son initially refusing to believe she would not be taken away again.