President Donald Trump posted a graphic video Thursday night showing a man smashing an SUV parked outside a Florida gas station with a hammer and then using it to bludgeon a woman who exited the store to confront him.
The suspect, Rolbert Joachin, repeatedly hit the woman with a hammer at a Chevron gas station in Fort Myers last week and ran off, according to the Fort Myers Police Department arrest report. The officers who responded to the scene found the woman on the ground not breathing, and emergency personnel pronounced her dead.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a release Tuesday that Joachin is from Haiti and is an undocumented immigrant.
Police later located Joachin and took him into custody. After he was read his rights, he agreed to speak to detectives and “provided a detailed confession about the murder,” the police report said.
Joachin, 40, was charged with homicide as well as damage to property and criminal mischief, according to court records, which listed him as transient. His public defender didn’t immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment. Joachin appeared for a pretrial detention hearing on Wednesday, and his next court date is set for May 4.
The local NBC affiliate identified the victim as Nilufa Easmin, also known as Yasmin, who was reportedly a clerk at the gas station and a mother of two teenage daughters.
In his lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump blamed the Biden administration, Democrats in Congress and “Deranged Liberal District Court Judges” for supporting policies that led to Joachin being granted temporary protected status.
A representative for former President Joe Biden and the offices of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Joachin entered the U.S. in August 2022 and was ordered removed by federal judge that year, the Department of Homeland Security said, but was granted temporary protected status by the Biden administration, which expired in 2024. The special status prevents the deportation of people from countries where conditions make it unsafe to return.
Trump has made fighting illegal immigration a central issue in both his first and second terms, instituting hard-line policies that have included aggressive efforts in the last year to deport high numbers of undocumented immigrants quickly — moves that have encountered numerous legal challenges. The president has routinely pointed to crimes undocumented immigrants have committed as evidence that Democrats have demonstrated weak leadership on the issues of immigration and border security.
Expert analysis and data from major-city police departments has shown there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the United States.
The Trump administration has sought to terminate temporary protected status for about 350,000 Haitian immigrants, but the effort was indefinitely postponed by a federal judge. The administration has since appealed the lower court order to the Supreme Court, which is expected to hear arguments in the case later this month.
Asked for comment, the White House pointed to Trump’s Truth Social comments.
Trump said the video surveillance footage “is one of the most vicious things” a person could see.
“As I’ve said all along, if you import the Third World, you become the Third World, and that is what happened over the four years of Democrat Control,” he said.
DHS said Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed a hold on Joachin and he will be deported “regardless of the outcome of this case.”
