President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. Friday at Florida Gulf Coast University's Alico Arena in Fort Myers, ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections — and the White House is pointing to a killing in that same city to make the case against former President Joe Biden's border policies.
The case is the April 3 hammer killing of Nilufa Easmin, a gas station clerk and mother of two teenage daughters. Haitian national Rolbert Joachim, 40, is accused of repeatedly striking her in the head with a hammer outside a Fort Myers gas station. According to the Department of Homeland Security, surveillance video showed the suspect smashing the woman's windshield before approaching her and repeatedly striking her in the head in broad daylight. Easmin died in the attack. Joachim was later arrested on Mango Street with help from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is charged with murder.
"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," White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital. "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."
DHS said 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 year, but he later received Temporary Protected Status, which expired in 2024.
Trump condemned the killing in an April Truth Social post, calling the surveillance video "one of the most vicious things you will ever see." "This one killing should be enough for these Radical Judges to STOP impeding my Administration's Immigration Policies," he wrote.