Federal and local law enforcement held a joint briefing on Friday to provide details on the arrest of Rolbert Joachin, a 40-year-old Haitian national accused of murdering a gas station clerk with a hammer.
The case has sparked intense scrutiny after officials confirmed that Joachin remained in the country despite a prior deportation order.
The victim, 51-year-old Nilufar Yasmin, was a mother of two and a naturalized U.S. citizen from Bangladesh. On April 3, surveillance footage captured Joachin smashing the windshield of Yasmin’s car at a Fort Myers gas station.
When she went outside to investigate, Joachin allegedly struck her multiple times in the head with a hammer.
Michael McComas, Acting Special Agent in Charge for HSI, described the footage as “a video you can never unwatch,” noting that Yasmin had “got her citizenship the right way” six years prior.
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The briefing detailed a complex immigration history. Joachin first entered the U.S. illegally via a maritime smuggling operation near Key West in August 2022.
Although an immigration judge issued a final order of removal in September 2022, Joachin was released into the country under the Biden administration’s policies.
He was later granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 2023. Kelly Walker, Acting Field Office Director for ICE, stated that while Joachin’s TPS technically expired in 2024, he maintained legal safeguards while a renewal application was pending. Those protections were officially revoked by the current administration only this week following the attack.
“This senseless act has shocked our community and underscores the critical importance of immigration enforcement,” Walker said. She emphasized that ICE has now lodged a detainer to ensure Joachin is “never released into the communities or the streets of the United States again.”
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The arrest followed a massive manhunt. Fort Myers Police Chief Jason Fields credited strong inter-agency cooperation for the swift capture, stating, “We were not going home until [he] was in custody.”
Fields also acknowledged reports of a prior confrontation involving Joachin and an ATM at the gas station the day before the murder, as well as separate contacts police had with the suspect in late March, which remain under investigation.
Joachin is currently held at the Lee County Jail without bond on charges of homicide and property damage. Prosecutors and federal agents confirmed he will face the full extent of the Florida legal system before any deportation proceedings begin.
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