Trump Posts Graphic Murder Footage

President Trump is under fire again for how he talks about immigration—this time for posting graphic, uncensored video of a woman being killed with a hammer outside a Florida gas station. The April 2 surveillance footage from Fort Myers shows an attack on a clerk identified as Nilufa Easmin, an immigrant from Bangladesh, per Gulf Coast News. Local media describe the suspect, Rolbert Joachin, as an unhoused Haitian immigrant. Trump on Thursday called him an "illegal immigrant" and "animal" who, along with other Haitians, was granted temporary protected status under the Biden administration. He said the video is "one of the most vicious things you will ever see." The Department of Homeland Security had posted a blurred version of the video earlier in the day.

The "shocking" post fits a pattern, per the Guardian: Trump has repeatedly highlighted violent crimes and linked them to immigration, sometimes inaccurately. In his State of the Union address, he described the killing of Ukrainian immigrant Iryna Zarutska in North Carolina in graphic terms and blamed "open borders," even though the man charged in that case was born in the US. Trump has also repeatedly targeted Haitians with temporary protected status, falsely claiming during the 2024 campaign that they were "eating the pets" in Ohio.

The Trump administration's effort to terminate protective status for Haitians has been blocked by a federal judge, though Trump argued that the Florida murder "should be enough for these Radical Judges to STOP impeding my Administration's Immigration Policies," per CNN. Critics, including Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, say the sharing of the video is aimed at stoking fear and inflaming anti-immigrant sentiment, per the Guardian. Joachin, 40, was arrested the same day of the killing and is being held on charges of murder, criminal mischief, and property damage. He'd allegedly demanded money from the clerk a day prior to the murder after he was unable to withdraw cash from a gas station ATM, per the Fort Myers News-Press.