Emergency Brake Extraction

My emergency brake has a pull-to-release lever, and I needed to remove it to get the dash off. With the dash off, I found that the lever doesn't remove easily...the cable pulls off the lever actuator, but the rest of the cable (short piece attached to what you actually pull) is stuck in there due to a blue plastic piece which is wedged into a curve in a metal bracket.

Not being able to extract the blue piece of junk conveniently, and the crappy generic manual being no help, I had to saw the little blue thing out.

This will make putting the brake back in a major pain, so how are you supposed to remove this little blue annoyance?