MIAMI (AP) — President Donald Trump shared a video of a deadly attack allegedly by a Haitian immigrant accused of bludgeoning a woman with a hammer at a Florida gas station, portraying the killing as justification for his administration's mass deportation agenda.
Rolbert Joachin, 40, was arrested and charged with killing a woman on April 2 in Fort Myers, about 160 miles northwest of Miami. Authorities said the man was from Haiti and arrived in the U.S. in 2022. The woman who was killed was identified as a 51-year-old immigrant from Bangladesh and a mother of two adult daughters.
Trump, who posted the video late Thursday to his Truth Social account, has often sought to portray immigrants as bringing crime to the U.S., and the video emerging from the Florida attack presented him with a new, particularly graphic opportunity to do so. Trump also often paints Democrats and his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, as allowing in immigrants who posed a criminal or national security threat to the U.S.
“The video of her brutal slaying is one of the most vicious things you will ever see,” Trump said in his post, describing the man as an “animal."
Critics say the president unjustly paints all immigrants as criminals in an effort to bolster his immigration agenda, when studies have found that people living in the U.S. illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent, drug and property crimes.
“Our hearts are with the family of the victim during this unimaginably painful time," said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which advocates for Haitian immigrants. “We condemn this act of violence in the strongest possible terms. But we must also be clear: one individual’s actions do not define an entire people. The exploitation of this tragedy to demonize Haitian immigrants and dismantle humanitarian protections is both unjust and deeply harmful.”
Graphic video captured woman's killing
The woman who was killed was working as a clerk at the convenience store of the gas station, according to court documents. The killing happened outside the store and the man was arrested the same day.
In security camera footage of her killing posted on the Department of Homeland Security's X feed, the man can be seen repeatedly slamming the hammer into a black vehicle parked in front of the gas station. Eventually, a woman in black pants and a pink shirt comes out and appears to question him.
The man, wearing a yellow shirt and black shorts, walks up to the woman and immediately swings the hammer at her head. The woman falls down on the sidewalk in front of the gas station’s front doors. The man attacks the woman with the hammer multiple times before stepping over her unmoving body and walking away, out of the frame of the camera.
The victim was later ıdentified in a police report as Nilufa Easmın, 51. A GoFundMe started by Samir Bahadur Syed, the President of the Bangladesh Association of Southwest Florida, described her as a "devoted mother who worked tirelessly to provide for her two young daughters."
Syed said that Easmin arrived in the United States about three decades ago and resided in Miami and Palm Beach before moving to Florida’s west coast. She was a single mother, and her two daughters — one 23 years old and the other about 26 — were born in the U.S., Syed told The Associated Press.
He added that Easmin had been working at the convenience store for nearly five months and that she also held another job.
Fort Myers police said they responded to a report of a woman being hit with a hammer at a Chevron gas station. When officers arrived, they found a woman on the ground with blood around her head and multiple cuts.
Officers later located Joachin walking on the street and took him into custody. The police said he has confessed. He was charged with murder and property damage and appeared in court on Wednesday. His arraignment is set for May 4.
An email message sent to the public defender listed in court records as Joachin’s lawyer seeking comment was not immediately returned.
Trump administration criticizes temporary deportation protections
Trump blamed Biden for granting the man temporary protection to stay in the U.S.
Kelei Walker, acting field office director for ICE enforcement and removal operations in Miami, said during a news conference Friday that Joachin arrived in a “water vessel” near Key West, Florida, in August 2022. He was arrested and given Temporary Protective Status in 2023. That status was revoked this week, Walker said.
“We’ll make sure he never gets to the streets of the United States and gets back to his home country,” she said.
The Trump administration has harshly criticized the use of Temporary Protected Status, which can be granted by the administration to citizens of a country experiencing turmoil or strife. Immigrants who qualify are allowed to stay in the U.S. and work for a temporary period, although Republican critics contend that the Biden administration misused its TPS authorities to broadly allow hundreds of thousands of people to stay in the country.
There are several lawsuits in the federal courts challenging Trump's efforts to terminate TPS for more than one million people, including 350,000 Haitians. In March, a federal appeals court sided with a lower judge’s ruling against the end of temporary status for Haitians, and the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on April 29.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration have often highlighted crimes committed by immigrants and created a website where people can look up people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the crimes they’ve committed in the U.S.
The administration often highlights “Angel Families” who have lost family members to crimes committed by immigrants.
On Thursday, ICE held an event marking the one-year anniversary of the reopening of an office dedicated to assisting those families, including emotional testimony from some of the surviving family members.
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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the first name of the acting director of ICE's Miami field office. It is Kelei, not Kelly.
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Bellisle reported from Seattle and Santana from Washington.
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