A 40-year-old Haitian national who entered the United States in August 2022 and received Temporary Protected Status now sits in a Florida jail without bond, charged with beating a 51-year-old mother of two to death with a hammer outside a Fort Myers gas station. President Trump shared surveillance video of the attack on Truth Social and laid the blame squarely on Joe Biden's immigration record.
Rolbert Jaochin faces charges of homicide, criminal mischief, and damage of property over $1,000 after the April 3 attack at a Chevron station. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed a detainer on him, and The US Sun reported that ICE stated Jaochin would "be deported regardless of the outcome of this case." His arraignment is set for May 4.
The case has become a flashpoint in the ongoing national argument over border security, Temporary Protected Status, and who bears responsibility when immigrants admitted under federal programs commit violent crimes on American soil.
The surveillance footage, which Trump posted to his Truth Social account, appears to show Jaochin striking the windshield of a black SUV before turning on the woman. He appears to hit her in the face with a hammer and continues to beat her while she lies on the ground outside the gas station. The woman died from her injuries.
Officers arrested Jaochin after reportedly recognizing him from previous encounters. No motive has been publicly disclosed. The victim's name has not been released.
The attack occurred at 7:20 a.m. on a Friday morning, in broad daylight, at a commercial gas station in a mid-sized Florida city. That a mother of two was beaten to death with a hammer in plain view of security cameras, allegedly by a man whose federal immigration status had already expired, is the kind of fact pattern that demands answers from the officials who set the policy.
Trump did not mince words. In a post on Truth Social, the president 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 on to describe the footage in blunt terms:
"The video of her brutal slaying is one of the most vicious things you will ever see."
Trump added that he felt an obligation to share the clip, even as he warned viewers away from it. As he put it on Truth Social:
"I don't recommend you watch this tape, because it is so terrible, 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."
Whatever one thinks of posting graphic video to a social media platform, the underlying facts are not in dispute. A man who arrived in the country under Biden-era immigration policy is charged with a savage homicide. The political class that enabled his presence owes the public an explanation, not silence.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Jaochin was granted Temporary Protected Status after arriving in the United States in August 2022. TPS is a federal designation that allows nationals of certain countries to remain in the U.S. temporarily due to conditions in their home country, such as armed conflict or natural disaster. Haiti has been a recurring TPS-designated nation.
That status reportedly expired in 2024. Yet Jaochin was still in the country in April 2025 when the attack occurred. The gap between a lapsed immigration status and a fatal assault raises the obvious question: why was he still here? The political figures who champion expansive use of TPS and resist interior enforcement rarely have to answer that question in front of the families left behind. Democrats have spent recent months focused on investigations and predictions about Trump's political future, but cases like this one suggest voters care far more about who is being allowed to stay in their communities.
ICE's detainer on Jaochin means the agency has formally requested that local authorities hold him for federal immigration proceedings, separate from the criminal case. The agency's statement that he will face deportation regardless of the homicide case's outcome signals that federal enforcement is now engaged, but only after a woman is dead.
This is not the first time a violent crime allegedly committed by an illegal immigrant or a foreign national with lapsed status has drawn national attention. Each case follows a familiar arc: a federal program admits or shields someone from removal, local law enforcement encounters the individual, and a community pays the price in blood. The political establishment then debates whether the case is an outlier or a systemic failure.
For the 51-year-old mother of two who was killed at a Chevron gas station in Fort Myers, the distinction is meaningless. She is dead. Her children have no mother. And the man charged with her killing was, by every available account, someone the federal government knew about and chose not to remove.
Trump's critics will object to his tone, his use of graphic video, and his direct attacks on Biden. That is their prerogative. But the substance of his complaint is harder to dismiss. The Biden administration extended and expanded TPS designations for Haitian nationals. It resisted aggressive interior enforcement. And now a man who arrived under those policies stands accused of one of the most brutal street-level homicides in recent memory. The left has a long history of elevating figures and causes that eventually collapse under the weight of their own records; the immigration permissiveness of the Biden years may prove to be another such cause.
No statement from Biden or his representatives appears in the available reporting on this case. No Democratic leader has publicly addressed the Fort Myers killing or explained how a man whose TPS had expired remained in the country long enough to commit it.
The charges against Jaochin are serious. Homicide. Criminal mischief. Property damage over $1,000. He is being held without bond. The legal process will determine his guilt or innocence in a courtroom. But the policy process that put him in Fort Myers in the first place has already delivered its verdict.
Temporary Protected Status was designed as a humanitarian tool, not a permanent settlement program. When it expires and the recipient remains, and then allegedly commits a violent felony, the system has failed at every level. The granting agency failed to enforce expiration. Local authorities apparently encountered Jaochin before the killing but did not remove him. And the political leadership that set the permissive tone never had to look a Fort Myers family in the eye and explain why. Florida officials have found themselves at the center of controversy before, but this case strikes at the most basic obligation of government: keeping its citizens safe.
The open questions are significant. What previous encounters did officers have with Jaochin? Why was he not flagged for removal after his TPS lapsed? What specific court is handling the case, and under what statutes? These details matter, and the public deserves them.
Trump's decision to share the video will generate debate about presidential conduct and the boundaries of social media. That debate is a sideshow. The real question is whether the federal government will enforce its own immigration deadlines, or whether more families will pay the price for Washington's refusal to do so. Political controversies come and go, but a mother's empty chair at the dinner table is permanent.
Policies have consequences. Some of them end up on surveillance cameras at gas stations in Fort Myers. The people who wrote those policies should have to watch.
