A 51-year-old mother of two is dead, beaten with a hammer in a Florida gas station parking lot by a man who, according to the Department of Homeland Security, should have been deported three years ago. President Trump shared the surveillance footage on Truth Social, calling it one of the most brutal things Americans will ever see and tying the killing directly to immigration policies he inherited from the Biden administration.
The suspect, 40-year-old Rolbert Joachin, a Haitian national, faces charges including murder without premeditation and criminal mischief with property damage over $1,000. He is being held without bond in Fort Myers, Florida, ahead of a May 4 arraignment. ICE has issued a detainer hold, and DHS says he will be deported regardless of the criminal case's outcome.
The facts of this case trace a familiar and infuriating arc: an illegal immigrant ordered deported, granted temporary status instead, left free to roam American streets, and now accused of taking an innocent woman's life. Every link in that chain deserves scrutiny.
The attack took place at around 7:20 a.m. last Friday in the parking lot of a Chevron gas station in Fort Myers. The victim, known to people around her as Easmin, was a convenience store worker and a mother of two teenage daughters. She had emigrated from Bangladesh.
The night before the killing, Joachin had reportedly been at the same store demanding cash from the clerk. When he returned the next morning and began banging on a black SUV in the parking lot, Easmin stepped outside to confront him.
What followed, captured on surveillance video, was swift and savage. Joachin struck the woman across the face. She fell. He continued striking her. Authorities said he also had a knife in his other hand during the attack. First responders found her in the Chevron parking lot, not breathing.
Court documents obtained by the Naples Daily News paint an even darker picture of intent. Joachin told investigators he went to the gas station "specifically to kill the victim." He wore the same clothes he had worn the night before so that she would recognize him. Fort Myers police said he provided a detailed confession.
After the attack, police launched a manhunt that lasted seven hours. When officers finally located Joachin, at least four of them recognized him from prior incidents, a detail that speaks volumes about how well-known this man already was to local law enforcement.
On March 24, Joachin had been detained and found in possession of a stolen backpack. That encounter, weeks before the killing, was apparently not enough to trigger removal or extended custody.
ICE agents assisted Fort Myers police in the arrest. The agency issued an immigration hold, and DHS confirmed that Joachin had entered the United States in August 2022, was ordered deported that same year, and was subsequently granted Temporary Protected Status under the Biden administration. That status expired in 2024.
So by the time he allegedly picked up a hammer and targeted Easmin, Joachin was in the country with no valid legal status, a prior deportation order, and a record of encounters with police. The system had multiple chances to remove him. It did not.
President Trump posted the surveillance footage to Truth Social on Thursday and used the case to renew his push against Temporary Protected Status, the program that, he says, allowed Joachin to remain in the country after being ordered deported. Trump has been unwavering in his stance on immigration enforcement, and this case gave him a concrete, documented example of the consequences he has long warned about.
In his post, Trump wrote:
"An Illegal Alien Criminal from Haiti, who was released into our Country by the WORST President in History, Crooked Joe Biden, and the Radical Democrats in Congress, just beat an innocent woman to death with a hammer at a gas station in Florida."
He went further, identifying the specific policy mechanism at fault. Trump stated that Joachin "was allowed to stay here because the Biden Administration granted him, and all Haitians, 'Temporary Protective Status,' a massively abused and fraudulent program which my Administration is working to terminate, but Deranged Liberal District Court Judges are standing in our way."
The president called on federal judges to stop blocking his administration's immigration enforcement efforts, writing that it was "enough for these Radical Judges to STOP impeding my Administration's Immigration Policies, and allow us to END THIS SCAM ONCE AND FOR ALL."
Trump also promised to "ensure quick and severe JUSTICE is served in this case."
The timeline DHS laid out is damning on its own terms. Joachin entered the country in August 2022. That same year, he was ordered deported. Instead of being removed, he received Temporary Protected Status, a designation originally designed for nationals of countries experiencing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or other extraordinary conditions. Under the Biden administration, TPS was expanded to cover Haitians, granting broad legal protection to individuals who might otherwise have been subject to removal proceedings.
When that status expired in 2024, Joachin remained. No removal followed. He stayed in Fort Myers, where he accumulated enough police contacts that four officers could identify him on sight. He was caught with a stolen backpack in March. And then, on a Friday morning, a woman who worked at a gas station lost her life.
The Democratic response to Trump's immigration enforcement has focused on legal challenges and political opposition. Federal courts have repeatedly intervened to slow or block the administration's efforts to wind down TPS and accelerate deportations. Trump framed this case as evidence that those judicial interventions carry real-world costs, costs paid not by judges or politicians, but by people like Easmin.
Easmin hailed from Bangladesh. She was 51 years old. She had two teenage daughters. She worked at a convenience store, the kind of job that puts you face-to-face with the public every day, in a place where you have little control over who walks through the door.
The owner and landlord of the D & D store where the attack occurred spoke to a Bangladeshi news outlet about her. Beyond that, details about her life remain thin. What is clear is that she was an immigrant herself, someone who came to this country and worked. She did not deserve to be targeted by a man who, by every available account, should not have been in the country at all.
That distinction matters. Lawful immigration and illegal immigration are not the same thing. The failure to enforce the law against Joachin did not protect immigrants. It killed one.
Joachin's arraignment is set for May 4. He remains behind bars without bond. DHS has stated he will be deported regardless of the criminal case's outcome, a pledge that, for the victim's family, comes far too late.
Trump used the case to make a broader argument about the consequences of what he described as four years of open-border policy. He wrote on Truth Social:
"NEVER FORGET that Joe Biden and the Democrat Party turned the United States of America into a dumping ground, allowing Tens of MILLIONS of Criminals, Lunatics and the Mentally Insane from all over the world to our into our country, totally unvetted and unchecked through our wide Open Borders."
He added: "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."
Whether one accepts that framing in full or not, the specific facts of this case are difficult to argue with. A man was ordered deported. He was given protected status instead. That status expired. He stayed. He killed. The system that was supposed to prevent exactly this outcome failed at every turn.
Meanwhile, House Democrats have spent their energy on efforts to remove Trump from office rather than grappling with the immigration enforcement failures that cases like this expose. The political class in Washington continues to fight over power. In Fort Myers, two teenage girls no longer have a mother.
Trump said he didn't recommend watching the surveillance tape but "felt I had an obligation to put it up so that people can see what Democrats are protecting, and wanting to come into our Country, even now, after all we've been through." He warned that if Democrats regained power, "they will immediately REOPEN the Border and allow America to once again be a Safe Haven for Criminals."
The Democratic political establishment's focus remains trained on Trump himself, not on the policy consequences his critics would rather not discuss. But surveillance cameras don't spin. Court documents don't hedge. And a confession doesn't care about your talking points.
Easmin is dead. Rolbert Joachin confessed. And the program that kept him here has a name, a history, and defenders who still refuse to answer for it.
