The male accused of killing a woman in a Florida hammer attack last week is a Haitian illegal alien who was protected from deportation under former President Joe Biden’s administration, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday.

As Blaze News previously reported, a 40-year-old male is accused of hitting a woman in the head with a hammer and killing her in a horrific attack recorded on surveillance video outside a Fort Myers gas station convenience store.

‘Not only did the Biden administration release him into the country, but they then gave him Temporary Protected Status.’

DHS said the suspect in the attack “first entered the United States in August 2022 and was released into the country under the Biden administration. A federal judge issued a final order of removal against him in 2022, but the Biden administration granted him Temporary Protected Status, which expired in 2024.”

“This illegal alien barbarically hit this woman in the head multiple times with a hammer. 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,” said Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary at the DHS Office of Public Affairs. “Their reckless immigration policies cost this woman her life.”

RELATED: Florida thug accused of bashing woman’s head with hammer, killing her, in horrific attack outside convenience store

Image source: Department of Homeland Security

DHS said Immigration and Customs Enforcement lodged a detainer against the suspect, and he will be deported regardless of the outcome of his case.

Notably, both Fort Myers Police as well as the Lee County Sheriff’s Office spell the suspect’s name Rolbert Joachin, while DHS originally spelled it Rolbert Joachim. The reason for the spelling discrepancy is unclear, but Fort Myers Police on Wednesday confirmed to Blaze News that “the correct spelling is Joachin.” DHS on Wednesday later updated its website to the spelling Joachin.

Joachin on Wednesday remained behind bars at the Lee County Jail on charges of homicide (murder dangerous depraved without premeditation) and criminal mischief. There is no bond listed for him in jail records.

Gulf Coast News on Wednesday reported that Joachin gave a detailed confession to detectives following his arrest and indicated that he went to the gas station last week specifically to kill the victim — a gas station clerk identified as Nilufa Easmin, also known as Yasmin. The outlet added in a video report that Easmin was the mother of two daughters.

More from Gulf Coast News:

Joachin told detectives he wore the same clothes that Yasmin had seen him in two days earlier so that she would recognize him, court notes said. He then said he intentionally smashed her car with a hammer so that she would come outside.

Surveillance video from the store captured the attack. In the video, Joachin reportedly smashed her car’s windshield. The surveillance video then shows the clerk coming outside. Joachin then approaches the victim and is accused of hitting her in the head with the hammer, killing her.

The following video report about the killing aired prior to the news about the suspect’s immigration status.

RELATED: Concealed-carrying motorcyclist fatally shoots alleged road-rage driver who charged at him with hammer, police say

What’s more, detectives said Joachin is a suspect in another case they have been working on for months, Gulf Coast News reported, adding that specifics about the case were not revealed.

The outlet added in a Wednesday video report concerning the suspect’s pretrial detention motion hearing that the judge ruled Joachin will remain in jail with no bond until trial because he’s too dangerous to be released to the public; his next court appearance — his arraignment — is scheduled for May 4.

The Miami Herald reported that the Trump administration has been “fiercely litigating in the courts to end [Temporary Protected Status] for Haiti and several other countries.” The paper added that an appeals court in March upheld TPS for Haitians, which upheld a ruling from Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, “but the administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the case days later.”

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, referring to the killing of the Fort Myers gas station clerk, wrote on X that “this horrific murder was preventable. Even as Florida arrests hundreds of criminal aliens every day, four years of the Biden admin’s open-border policies continue to wreak havoc on our communities. Members of Congress pushing for amnesty should be ashamed. There is no dignity in allowing more American victims at the hands of those who have no right to be in our country.”

Jeremy Redfern, deputy chief of staff for Uthmeier, added on X that “U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes said that ending TPS for Haitians was racist, and she blocked the attempt. Oral arguments over whether SCOTUS should stay Judge Reyes’ order happening on April 29th. So, here we are.”

Editor’s note: This article has been edited after publication to note that DHS now spells the name Joachin.

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​Department of homeland security, Immigration and customs enforcement, Arrest, Biden administration, Crime, Dhs, Florida, Fort myers, Haiti, Hammer attack, Homicide, Ice, Illegal immigration, Joe biden, Killing, Temporary protected status, Politics 

My childhood had a simple structure: Leave the house, come back when hungry.

Nobody tracked my location. Nobody scheduled my fun. I roamed a small Irish village with a rotating gang of kids, knocking on doors to collect whoever was free, wandering fields we didn’t own, climbing trees we absolutely shouldn’t have.

Our treehouse was born from boredom. Three of us, on a long summer afternoon, with nothing to do.

Our treehouse — built from stolen timber, held together, technically, by two bent nails — would have given a structural engineer a full breakdown. We were enormously proud of it.

Bumps and bruises

There were scuffles. Real ones, occasionally bloody, always brief. Someone would throw a punch over some perceived injustice. A disputed goal, a broken rule, an insult that landed a little too cleanly. Five minutes later, we’d be back at it, whatever it was that day.

No adults mediated. No one processed feelings. The fight resolved itself because the game needed bodies, and everyone knew it. You learned, quickly, that holding a grudge cost you far more than swallowing it.

The point isn’t that we were tougher or that children today are soft, although I would argue that both are true. The point I’m trying to make is that we were unsupervised, and supervision, it turns out, changes everything.

I say this not from a rocking chair but as someone who, at age 8 or 9, split his time between farm chores and disappearing into the village like a feral little fugitive. Less than 25 years ago. A blink of the eye, really, except apparently long enough to completely reinvent childhood.

Rationing daylight

Now, one in 10 parents say their young children play outside once a week or less. One week. Seven days. Imagine rationing daylight like that. Childhood has migrated indoors, onto screens, into carefully arranged playdates where two children sit in a living room while two adults hover nearby, making sure nobody says anything upsetting. The kids sense the performance. They behave accordingly.

Researchers from Denmark recently did something beautifully simple: They asked children what good play actually feels like.

Not what it teaches. Not what skills it builds. What it feels like from inside.

The answers were slightly embarrassing for every adult who has ever built a color-coded activity schedule. Children cared about the feeling of play. That loose, almost electric sense that something is genuinely alive. They cared about belonging — not polite, managed inclusion, but being genuinely wanted by the group. They cared about imagination running slightly off the rails. They even valued a certain productive chaos, the kind that adults instinctively shut down.

Adults, predictably, care about outcomes — cognitive development, motor skills, social learning they can point to and measure. Children care about none of this while they’re playing. What they actually care about is whether it’s fun, whether they’re wanted, and whether there’s the slightest chance that it might go delightfully wrong.

Screen police

Our games always went somewhere unexpected. A football match would mutate, mid-afternoon, into something involving a rope, an old mattress someone had dumped in a field, and rules nobody could fully explain afterward. The logic was impeccable at the time. The mattress did not survive.

Modern play environments iron out exactly these qualities. Soft surfaces, approved equipment, and an adult nearby to ensure fairness and prevent anything resembling genuine consequence. The result looks like play. Children sense that it isn’t, the way you sense when a photograph has been retouched slightly too much. Something essential has been removed.

Screens fill the gap with surgical efficiency. Nearly a third of young children now engage regularly in what researchers call “media play” — a phrase that earns its quotation marks. Tapping a screen is not the same as negotiating who gets to be the villain or managing the social fallout when the smallest kid turns out to be the best climber and everyone has to begrudgingly update their hierarchy. Digital games have fixed rules, predictable rewards, and zero social friction. That’s precisely their appeal. It’s also precisely their poverty.

The consequences don’t arrive with bruises or a note from school. They arrive later, wearing other disguises. Low frustration tolerance. Social anxiety with no obvious origin. A deep unfamiliarity with boredom, which is actually the raw material of invention.

RELATED: The day my father handed me the gun

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Free range

Our treehouse was born from boredom. Three of us, on a long summer afternoon, with nothing to do. Within an hour, we had made a plan. Within a week, we had made something structurally catastrophic and deeply satisfying. Nobody told us to build it. Nobody approved the design. Nobody stood beneath it checking for hazards, which was probably wise given what happened to the second shelf.

Children need exactly that kind of space. Not the park for 15 minutes before the grocery run, but long, unscheduled stretches where the only available resource is other children and whatever the back yard contains. Boredom long enough to become uncomfortable. Discomfort long enough to force creativity.

They need, occasionally, for nobody to be watching.

We turned out fine, most of us. There were scraped knees. One incident involved a gate left wide open, a bull wandering into the street, and a level of collective amnesia that has never fully lifted. The treehouse was, after much deliberation, abandoned to the weather. The nails, I’m told, are still there.

​Childhood, Ireland, Culture, Play, Helicopter parents, Lifestyle 

A Democrat mayor joined a mob of activists to shut down the painting of a mural in honor of Iryna Zarutska in Providence, Rhode Island, but the muralist is getting the last laugh.

Mayor Brett Smiley said the mural was against the values of the city after the owners of a prominent gay bar previously said they would allow it to be painted on one of their walls.

‘She worked to build a life for herself and lost it along the way. This mural is our way of honoring her on a building owned by an immigrant family who understands that journey.’

Halfway through the commission of the mural, the owners of the Dark Lady changed their minds and said on social media that the outrage from the LGBTQIA+ community forced them to stop the painting.

Now the mural has found a new home at a Lebanese restaurant instead of the gay bar.

The owner of Opa the Phoenician on Atwells Avenue is donating space for the mural on Federal Hill.

“She was once an immigrant chasing the American dream,” said Francois Karam about Zarutska. “She worked to build a life for herself and lost it along the way. This mural is our way of honoring her on a building owned by an immigrant family who understands that journey.”

He went on to say that the decision wasn’t made out of political motivation.

A Change.org petition garnered more than 13,600 signatures from those who demanded that the mural be returned to the Dark Lady’s wall. In an email statement to Blaze News, the petition creator lamented that the voices against the mural had won.

“While I appreciate that a version of Iryna Zarutska’s mural has been allowed to go up at Opa Restaurant on Atwells Avenue, this is no real victory. It’s a quiet concession to political pressure,” said Anthony D’Ellena, a local Republican committee chairman.

“Mayor Smiley called the original prominent mural ‘divisive’ and used his influence to bully the first business into removing it,” he added. “Now Iryna gets a diminished, tucked-away tribute on a side wall instead of the bold, visible memorial she deserved in downtown Providence.”

A separate petition on Change.org opposing the mural garnered 15 signatures.

RELATED: New butterfly species named in honor of Ukrainian woman brutally murdered on NC light rail

D’Ellena said in an update to the petition that he would continue to fight for the return of the mural.

The brutal murder of Iryna Zarutska, an immigrant who survived the war in Ukraine, was captured on security video from the Charlotte, North Carolina, light rail system. A suspect with a history of mental illness and violent crime was arrested and sparked a campaign against lax law enforcement policies.

Mayor Smiley is running for re-election in 2026 against another Democrat on the ballot as well as a third Democrat candidate who is a convicted child molester.

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​Mayor brett smiley vs zarutska mural, Iryna zarutska mural, Activist shuts down iryna mural, Muralist defeats activists, Politics 

The U.S. and Iran reached a fragile ceasefire agreement on Tuesday before President Donald Trump’s threat of civilizational annihilation could be put to the test.

Trump subsequently noted that the U.S. “will be helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz. There will be lots of positive action! Big money will be made,” adding that “this could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!”

‘It is madness.’

When asked on Wednesday whether he was amenable to the Iranians charging a toll for all ships that transit the Strait of Hormuz — the body of water between Iran and Oman linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, across which one-fifth of the world’s oil customarily travels — Trump told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, “We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It’s a way of securing it — also securing it from lots of other people.”

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Trump said, hours before Iran reportedly halted oil tankers attempting to pass through the strait, claiming Israel had violated the ceasefire by firing on Lebanon.

While now apparently open to such a partnership with Iran, Trump suggested to reporters on Monday that the U.S. could unilaterally impose tolls on vessels attempting to pass through the strait, reported The Hill.

RELATED: Israel ramps up attacks on Middle East target despite US-Iran ceasefire

Elif Acar/Anadolu/Getty Images

“What about us charging tolls?” said Trump. “Why shouldn’t we? We’re the winner.”

He also said during the press briefing, “We want free traffic of oil and everything else.”

Such tolls on vessels transiting a natural strait would seem to run afoul of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — ratified by the U.S., 170 other nations, and the European Union — which guarantees vessels the “right of transit passage” through straits used for international navigation; bars states bordering straits from hampering transit passage; and states that “no charge may be levied upon foreign ships by reason only of their passage through the territorial sea.”

Tolls can be levied only at man-made canals, according to the U.N. agreement.

Of course, the agreement’s authority and enforceability could be tested.

“All international law, unfortunately, is fragile,” Saleem Ali, chair of the University of Delaware’s geography department, told the New York Times. Ali noted that international laws depend on mutual respect between nations.

Blaze News has reached out to the White House for comment.

The idea clearly doesn’t resonate with everyone.

Karen Young, a senior research scholar at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, told Blaze News, “It is madness to think we are jointly collecting fees to help secure profits to the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps].”

Former Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy expressed a similar objection, writing, “If President Trump lets the Iranians charge a toll for ships in the Strait of Hormuz, then every time you fill up your car at the pump, you will put money straight in the pockets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This would be a humiliating disaster for the US.”

Joint venture or no, it appears that Iran aspires to keep sweating passersby in the Strait of Hormuz, now for crypto tributes.

Hamid Hosseini, a spokesman for Iran’s government-linked Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Union, told the Financial Times that his nation intends to force ships passing through the strait to pay the cryptocurrency equivalent of $1 per barrel of oil and notify Iranian officials of their cargo during the two-week ceasefire.

“Once the email arrives and Iran completes its assessment, vessels are given a few seconds to pay in Bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,” said Hosseini. “Everything can pass through, but the procedure will take time for each vessel, and Iran is not in a rush.”

Reuters estimated last week that if Iran charged each vessel $2 million to transit the Strait of Hormuz, as it had already in one instance, and traffic were restored to prewar volume — 150 ships down the strait — Tehran could bring in around $110 billion annually.

According to the European think tank Bruegel, the $2 million per vessel, which “translates to roughly $1 per barrel,” would prompt the world oil price to rise “by only $0.05-$0.40 per barrel, relative to the pre-war level,” with Gulf exporters absorbing the bulk of the toll.

Of course, for Iran to impose tolls, it must first keep the strait open.

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​Sea, Strait of hormuz, Law of the sea, Iran, Us, Donald trump, Toll, Duty, Money, Oil, Gas, Energy, Persian, Gulf, Export, War, Politics 

With the whole world holding its breath amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East over the past several weeks, President Trump’s ceasefire with Iran has restored some confidence to the markets — though some uncertainty remains.

Oil prices dropped and stocks surged after Trump’s announcement on Tuesday evening that a ceasefire had been reached with Iran.

Oil prices also plummeted as the Strait of Hormuz has been projected to be opened.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose over 1,300 points since the close of market on Tuesday following the announcement of the ceasefire.

Likewise, the S&P 500 saw a 2.5% jump from Tuesday to Wednesday in response to the news, moving from just over 6,600 to 6,785 when markets opened on Wednesday.

RELATED: Iran reneges on key point of ceasefire amid allegations of broken promises

Punit PARANJPE/AFP/Getty Images

The NASDAQ also saw a significant leap in response to the news, moving nearly 650 points for an almost 3% positive gain.

Oil prices also plummeted as the Strait of Hormuz has been projected to be opened. Crude oil WTI dropped from roughly 112 per barrel to just under 95 per barrel, a 17-point drop overnight.

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​Politics, S&p 500, Nasdaq, Crude oil, Oil prices, Gas prices, Iran, Israel, Dow jones, President trump 

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe said the recovery of a downed U.S. airman in Iran was a “no-fail mission” that required technology available nowhere else in the world.

In reference to an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter pilot who was lost in Iran, the CIA boss told reporters on Tuesday that the challenge of finding the pilot was comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the desert; but they did it.

‘If your heart is beating, we will find you.’

Director Ratcliffe revealed the agency used human and technical assets and also “executed a deception campaign to confuse the Iranians who were desperately hunting for our airmen.”

He added, “At the president’s direction, we deployed both human assets and exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service in the world possesses.”

While Ratcliffe stopped short of describing exactly what those “unique capabilities” were, an insider report by the New York Post claims that the CIA implemented a secret technology known as “Ghost Murmur.”

RELATED: Trump announces CEASEFIRE with Iran ahead of deadline

The mountainous yet barren region of the Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province in Iran offered an ideal setting for the technology’s first use, one source reportedly said.

The CIA director stated that even though the pilot was hiding and concealed in a mountain crevice, he was still visible to the CIA but “invisible to the enemy.”

It was “about as clean an environment as you could ask for” due to low electromagnetic interference, the source went on. With “almost no competing human signatures” and a strong “thermal contrast between a living body and the desert floor” at nighttime, operators enjoyed a second layer of confirmation that they had found their man.

“It’s like hearing a voice in a stadium, except the stadium is a thousand square miles of desert,” an unnamed source told the Post.

The “Ghost Murmur” tech uses long-range quantum magnetometry to identify the electromagnetic pulse of a human heartbeat. The heartbeat’s signature is separated from background noise to locate it.

The source, allegedly briefed on the CIA program, also said that “in the right conditions, if your heart is beating, we will find you.”

The source told the Post that the signal of a heartbeat is usually so weak it can only be measured in a hospital-style setting with sensors pressed to a person’s chest, however, advances in the technology — chiefly built around finding defects in synthetic diamonds — have made finding such signals more possible.

“The capability is not omniscient. It works best in remote, low-clutter environments and requires significant processing time,” the insider claimed.

RELATED: NASA astronaut gives very American response to DEI questioning

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps/Anadolu/Getty Images

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told reporters at the same press conference that the pilot’s first message upon finding cover was “God is good.”

“We leave no man behind. And that is not luck. It’s the result of unmatched training, superior technology, unbreakable warrior ethos, and sheer American grit,” Hegseth added.

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​Return, Cia, Iran, Trump, Secret, Heartbeat, Tech 

In a sudden change, Iran has reportedly once again closed off the Strait of Hormuz amid allegations that the ceasefire agreement has been violated.

Iran reportedly prevented ships from passing through the Strait of Hormuz Wednesday morning, even though opening the strait was a key aspect of the ceasefire agreement reached Tuesday night.

President Trump has denied that Lebanon is included in the ceasefire, seemingly backing Israel’s continued advancements into the country.

According to an initial report, Iran has closed the strait in response to Israel’s ongoing military offensive in Lebanon.

The ceasefire agreement, announced by Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, on Tuesday, specifically stipulated that the ceasefire applies everywhere, including Lebanon: “With the greatest humility, I am pleased to announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.”

RELATED: ‘Golden age of the Middle East’: Trump lays out plan for coming weeks after Iran agrees to temporary ceasefire

Elke Scholiers/Getty Images

According to multiple reports, President Trump has denied that Lebanon is included in the ceasefire, seemingly backing Israel’s continued advancements into the country.

These discrepancies raise more questions about the exact nature of the ceasefire deal and, perhaps, the authority with which Pakistan’s prime minister speaks on behalf of the two parties in the conflict.

For Israel’s part, the Israel Defense Forces announced that in “10 minutes,” they “completed the largest coordinated strike across Lebanon since the start of Operation Roaring Lion.” The strike reportedly targeted 100+ Hezbollah targets in Beirut, Beqaa, and southern Lebanon.

In his post, Prime Minister Sharif announced that the ceasefire would be further discussed at the upcoming “Islamabad Talks” on Friday.

This is a developing story.

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​Politics, Iran, Strait of hormuz, Israel, Idf, Lebanon, United states, Trump, President trump, Shehbaz sharif, Pakistan, Hezbollah, Beirut, Israel defense forces