The White House is tying a Fort Myers gas station hammer killing by a Haitian illegal immigrant to Biden-era border releases as President Trump prepares a Florida rally.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital that Rolbert Joachim, a Haitian national released into the country under the Biden administration, later received Temporary Protected Status and is now charged in the fatal hammer attack of a Fort Myers gas station clerk. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. President Trump is scheduled to speak Friday at 2 p.m. at Florida Gulf Coast University’s Alico Arena ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms.
The case has become a concrete exhibit in the administration’s argument that prior border policy left communities exposed. Bis framed the killing as the predictable result of release-and-protect decisions, not an isolated tragedy.
Bis put the charge in blunt terms.
"A few short months ago, an illegal alien barbarically killed a woman outside of a gas station in Fort Myers by hitting her on the head with a hammer multiple times,"
She continued:
"This heinous murderer was RELEASED into the country by the Biden administration. Not only did the Biden administration release him into the country, but they then gave him Temporary Protected Status. This is the result of Democrats open-border policies. If you import the third world, you become the third world."
Department of Homeland Security accounts described in reporting say surveillance video showed the suspect smashing the woman’s windshield, then repeatedly striking her in the head with a hammer in broad daylight outside a Fort Myers gas station. The victim was a mother of two teenage daughters. She died in the attack.
The New York Post identified the victim as 51-year-old Nilufa Easmin and the accused as 40-year-old Rolbert Joachin, reporting that a Lee County grand jury indicted him and that State Attorney Amira Fox said prosecutors will seek the death penalty. Fox described the crime as extreme and unwarranted and said the defendant entered the United States illegally and ended the life of a mother at her job.
Fort Myers police enlisted Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help locate the suspect. He was arrested on Mango Street. ICE lodged an immigration detainer, and DHS said he would face deportation regardless of how the criminal case ends.
That cooperation is the opposite of catch-and-release habits that defined the prior era, and it is the kind of local-federal pairing the White House wants voters to notice as White House officials highlight the Fort Myers case in the run-up to the Florida event.
DHS material summarized in coverage states Joachim entered the United States in August 2022 and was released into the country under the Biden administration. A federal judge issued a final removal order against him that same year. He later received Temporary Protected Status. That status expired in 2024. He remained.
TPS lets eligible foreign nationals from designated countries stay and work temporarily because of conditions at home. It is not a path to permanent residency. In this sequence, a removal order came first. Protected status came after. The killing came after the status lapsed.
Separate Fox News reporting on the daylight attack likewise described the suspect as an illegal immigrant released under Biden-era policies, cited the windshield smash and repeated hammer blows on video, and carried DHS blame for the prior policy stack that left him free. One DHS statement praised the ICE-local arrest as proof that joint work can remove dangerous offenders faster.
The paper trail is what matters for accountability. Entry. Release. Final removal order. TPS. Expiration. Then a clerk beaten to death with a hammer outside her workplace.
Readers tracking administration messaging have seen a steady drumbeat of enforcement claims, including pieces on how the White House has used high-profile moments to frame broader policy fights for a national audience.
In an April Truth Social post, President Trump called the surveillance video “one of the most vicious things you will ever see.” He argued the killing should push judges to stop blocking his administration’s immigration policies.
"This one killing should be enough for these Radical Judges to STOP impeding my Administration’s Immigration Policies,"
The White House is now recycling the case as Trump returns to the same Florida city where the clerk was killed. The political geography is not subtle. Fort Myers sits in Lee County, where Trump took 63.6% in 2024 to Kamala Harris’s 35.3%, per official county results. Statewide, he widened his Florida margin from roughly one point in 2016 to more than 13 points in 2024.
Administration figures also claim Trump’s crackdown produced 17 straight months without releases at the border and the deportation of more than 3 million people who were in the country illegally. Those claims sit in White House releases touting restored enforcement after years of catch-and-release.
Personnel churn inside the building remains a sideshow for the same audience that follows border messaging, including coverage of how Katie Zacharia left the press secretary role after a brief and rocky stretch.
Prosecutors indicted Joachim on a first-degree murder charge and said they would seek the death penalty. The criminal track and the immigration track now run in parallel. A detainer is already in place. DHS says deportation waits at the end either way.
What the record does not show is a motive for the hammer attack. What it does show is a policy sequence that kept a man with a final removal order inside the United States long enough for a gas-station clerk to meet him in a parking lot.
That is the argument Bis made explicit: release, then TPS, then a dead mother of two. Trump’s Friday speech at Alico Arena lands in the same county, with midterms weeks away on the calendar and border enforcement still a central contrast with the Biden years.
White House rapid response has become a familiar tool in cultural and political fights alike, as when the White House rebuked Natalie Maines after a public shot at the president, and the Fort Myers case fits the same pattern of naming costs in plain language.
A clerk went to work. A man who should have been removed years earlier walked free. The video, the indictment, and the detainer are what remain, and voters can judge the policy that made that possible.
