Rolbert Joachin arrived illegally in 2022, got Temporary Protected Status from Biden, and beat a mother of two to death with a hammer at a Fort Meyers, Florida gas station.
Two weeks later, six House Republicans voted to extend the same program that kept him here.
Democrats got exactly what they wanted – and six Republicans made it possible.
Haiti TPS Vote Passes With Six Republican Votes Despite Fort Myers Hammer Killing
Representative Ayanna Pressley, a member of AOC’s Squad, spent months collecting signatures on a discharge petition – the rarely successful legislative maneuver that lets a majority of members bypass leadership and force a floor vote.
She needed 218 signatures. She got them because four Republicans broke ranks: Mike Lawler of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Don Bacon of Nebraska, and Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida.
Then the House voted on the actual bill Wednesday. The discharge motion passed 219-209. Six Republicans voted yes – the original four, plus Carlos Gimenez of Florida and Nicole Malliotakis of New York.
Heritage Action issued a key vote against it, called it de facto amnesty, and made clear every Republican who voted yes would see it on their Heritage scorecard.
Representative Chip Roy of Texas called the floor vote "absurd."
On the discharge petition itself, Roy had told Fox News Digital it was "yet another attempt to shield TPS-holding illegal aliens from removal, including dangerous criminals, obstructing the Trump administration's rightful efforts to restore the rule of law."
Represenative Andy Biggs of Arizona cut straight to it: "Members of Congress have a sacred and exclusive duty to our American constituents, not to foreign nationals."
Temporary Protected Status for Haiti Has Run 16 Years Past Its Expiration Date
Congress created Temporary Protected Status in 1990 as a narrow tool – a short-term shield for foreign nationals already inside the United States when their home country experienced a sudden disaster, buying them time until it was safe to return.
Haiti was first designated in January 2010 after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake killed more than 200,000 people.
That was 16 years ago.
Since then, under both Republican and Democrat administrations, the designation has been extended and redesignated so many times the program bears no resemblance to what Congress authorized.
Heritage Action put it plainly: TPS for Haiti had become "a de facto amnesty program" – one now covering more than 350,000 people with no end date in sight.
Biden turbocharged it. Joachin arrived by boat near Key West in August 2022 – 12 years after the earthquake that supposedly justified Haiti's designation. A federal judge issued a final removal order against him that same year. Biden's DHS gave him TPS anyway.
Trump moved to end it in June 2025, setting a termination date of September 2. Activist judges blocked it. A D.C. district court judge paused the termination again in February 2026. The Supreme Court takes up the case April 29.
Rolbert Joachin Had a Removal Order in 2022 and Biden Gave Him TPS Anyway
Bacon said ending TPS would cost Nebraska healthcare workers their jobs and trigger a workforce crisis. Lawler said his district – which has the second-largest Haitian diaspora population per capita in the country – would lose nurses.
Malliotakis said deporting TPS holders "to a country in peril would be uncompassionate and misguided."
Here is what none of them addressed: Joachin had a final order of removal in 2022. A federal judge had already ruled he should be gone. Biden's DHS overrode that order and gave him TPS. He stayed. Nilufa Easmin – a Bangladeshi immigrant who came here legally, became a citizen, and was working as a gas station clerk – is dead.
Pressley's bill would lock in the program that kept Joachin here for three more years, through 2029 – past Trump's term, regardless of what the Supreme Court decides in two weeks. That is why Trump wanted it stopped. These six Republicans handed Democrats exactly the win they needed.
The bill goes to the Senate, where the 60-vote threshold will almost certainly kill it. Trump would veto it even if it got through.
But the floor vote today was never really about the bill. It was about six Republicans standing next to Ayanna Pressley and telling voters the program that shielded Rolbert Joachin deserves three more years.
Heritage Action is keeping score. So is everyone who watched that Fort Myers surveillance footage.
Sources:
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security, "Haitian Illegal Alien Violently Kills Innocent Mother by Repeatedly Hitting Her with a Hammer Outside Gas Station in Fort Myers," DHS.gov, April 7, 2026.
- Heritage Action, "Heritage Action Issues Key Vote Against Extension of Haiti Temporary Protected Status Designation," HeritageAction.com, April 15, 2026.
- Rep. Ayanna Pressley, "BREAKING: Pressley Wins Key Vote on Extending Temporary Protected Status for Haiti," Pressley.House.gov, April 15, 2026.
- Andrew Kerr, "Dem-led push to extend protections for Haitians faces outrage after brutal hammer killing," Fox News Digital, April 13, 2026.
- Daniel Desrochers, "House advances legal protections for Haitian migrants over GOP objections," Washington Examiner, April 15, 2026.