door latch - trouble pulling out electrical

The latch for the door handle broke and I have a new part to replace it with. It looks very straight forward to pull out the 2 electrical plus and plug into the new latch; however, I cannot pull out the electrical cords. I don’t know if there is a trick to this, some button or something to pull or whether they are older and a little rusty or something and will not budge. I don’t want to pull too hard for fear of breaking them so wanted to get a heads up first to see if there is something I am missing.