A shocking fatal attack at a Florida gas station has thrust the decades-long debate over U.S. immigration policy back into the national spotlight, with former and current President Donald Trump leveraging the violent incident to escalate his push to eliminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants. The accused attacker, 41-year-old Rolbert Joachin, a Haitian national, has been formally charged with homicide following the April 3 incident that left a 62-year-old woman dead. U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed the charges in a press briefing held Friday, detailing the brutal nature of the attack.
Graphic footage of the assault, which shows Joachin repeatedly striking the victim with a hammer first in the open street before delivering six additional blows to her head and torso after she collapses, has circulated widely online. Trump first shared the unedited video on his Truth Social platform, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) later confirmed it had also released the footage publicly. In his post, Trump described the recording as “one of the most vicious things you will ever see,” arguing that the slaying alone justified ending court blocks on his administration’s effort to revoke TPS for Haitian migrants.
“This one killing should be enough for judges to stop impeding my Administration’s Immigration Policies,” Trump wrote on the social platform. Micah McCombs, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, echoed the shock of many in law enforcement, telling reporters Friday, “It’s senseless. It’s a video you can never unwatch.”
Local law enforcement in Fort Myers, where the attack occurred, requested assistance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to locate Joachin immediately after the incident. Authorities took him into custody within hours of the attack, with no extended manhunt required. DHS records detail Joachin’s immigration history: he first entered the U.S. in August 2022, and a federal judge issued a final removal order against him that same year. However, the prior Biden administration granted Joachin TPS, a status that expired in 2024.
Created by Congress in 1990, TPS is designed to bar deportations of immigrants from countries facing catastrophic conditions, including natural disasters, armed conflict, or public health crises that make safe return impossible. Haitian nationals were first granted TPS eligibility after the 2010 magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people and left the Caribbean nation’s infrastructure in ruins. Successive presidential administrations have repeatedly extended Haitian TPS, most recently in 2021 under the Biden administration, covering more than 350,000 current enrollees.
Shortly after returning to office in 2025, the Trump administration moved to terminate TPS for Haitian migrants, arguing that the program has strayed far from its original temporary mandate and effectively become a backdoor path to permanent residency that contradicts Congress’ original intent. In February, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the administration’s termination order, putting the policy change on hold while legal challenges proceed. The case is now set for oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court later this month, after the high court agreed to take up the appeal.
The Trump administration’s broader effort to dismantle TPS programs across multiple host nations puts hundreds of thousands of additional migrants at risk of deportation. Enrollees from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, South Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela all currently hold TPS protections that could be revoked if the Supreme Court upholds the administration’s authority to end the programs. The administration has repeatedly argued that the broad, repeated extensions of TPS have incentivized illegal border crossings and overuse of the program by Democratic policymakers.
In a statement released Friday, DHS confirmed that regardless of the outcome of Joachin’s criminal homicide case, he will be deported from the U.S. once legal proceedings are complete. The incident has already reignited fierce partisan debate over border security and immigration policy ahead of upcoming congressional votes on immigration reform, with Trump and Republican lawmakers doubling down on their calls for stricter enforcement and broader restrictions on migrant entry.