Donald Trump has posted a graphic surveillance video on Truth Social showing a woman being bludgeoned to death with a hammer at a gas station in Fort Myers, Florida. The president described the suspect, a Haitian immigrant, as an 'illegal immigrant' and used the footage to argue for stricter immigration controls and mass deportations.
The video, originally surfaced by Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, was shared by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) before Trump amplified it to his millions of followers. The DHS statement claimed the suspect was 'released' in 2022 under the Biden administration and given temporary protected status, though the accuracy of this claim is unclear.
Trump's decision to post the unblurred video aligns with his pattern of using shocking images of violence attributed to undocumented immigrants to stoke fear. In his January State of the Union address, he similarly highlighted the murder of Iryna Zarutska, falsely describing her killer as an immigrant. The president has also previously promoted baseless conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
The victim, Yasmin Nilufar, was a Bangladeshi immigrant who had lived in the US for about 30 years and is survived by two teenage daughters, according to Samir Syed of the Bangladeshi American Society of South West Florida. The suspect, who is unhoused, had reportedly attempted to withdraw cash from an ATM the day before the attack and demanded money from the clerk.
Critics, including Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, condemned the sharing of the video as a deliberate attempt to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment. The Trump administration has faced legal challenges to its efforts to remove temporary protected status from Haitians and other immigrants.
