Florida International University photo
Audio By Carbonatix
A Florida International University (FIU) student was arrested on Thursday for allegedly requesting in a WhatsApp group chat, in what she later called a “dumb joke,” that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drop a bomb on a campus building before capstone project presentations.
According to the FIU Police arrest report obtained by New Times, Gabriela Saldana “made a threat to kill or do bodily harm to individuals regarding a scheduled event” planned for Friday. The 23-year-old student who admitted to sending the messages in the 200-person chat was charged with written threats to kill or do bodily injury with prejudice, the arrest report states.
A screenshot of the message circulating on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, states, “Netanyahu, if you can hear me, drop some bonbons for us capstone students in Ocean Bank Convention Center.” An FIU police officer also claimed in bond court that Saldana wrote, “There is going to be a bomb in the Ocean Bank Convocation Center, and it is going to be @Jonathan’s fault.” Jonathan, according to police, was a member of the group chat.
Saldana’s arrest came one day after the messages were allegedly sent.
In the fallout of Saldana’s arrest, FIU students and Instagram users have pointed out the discrepancies between how this incident has been handled versus the group chat where students used racist slurs, discussed dozens of ways of violently killing Black people, and advocated for “Total negro death.”
“And the what about the racist group chat with death threats?” a comment reads on WSVN’s (Channel 7) Instagram post. “That’s not probable cause?”
Another added, “Why they ain’t do this for the TPUSA gc?? 😂”
The university’s investigation into the members of the racist group chat appears to be ongoing.
None of the students from the group has faced expulsion or suspension since the messages were leaked nearly six weeks ago, according to the Miami Herald earlier this month. According to their federal First Amendment lawsuit against the university over the ongoing probe, FIU student Dariel Gonzalez and FIU law student Abel Carvajal, the former Miami-Dade County GOP secretary, have final disciplinary hearings scheduled for the week of April 28.
Students on campus have expressed frustration with the university’s handling of the messages. Meanwhile, another group of students is facing potential student conduct violations for protesting the university’s partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A user responded, “So what about the other group chat?”
Others questioned whether Saldana’s comment constituted an arrestable offense.
Lawyer Jack Palmeri wrote, “From a criminal defense perspective, the ‘Nentanyahu request’ seems too far fetched to be reasonably taken seriously.” He tells New Times in an interview that the case looks weak and the officers rushed the arrest, citing mistakes in the arrest report and a lack of detail. He adds: “The reality is you have to look at the reasonableness of the context, knowing the audience, knowing what she said, who she said it to, and how they really took it.”
He notes there is no established content that would reasonably suggest she had an “in” with Netanyahu.
“I don’t think it’s reasonable for a person to claim they objectively felt this was going to happen, that Benjamin Netanyahu was going to bomb the school,” Palmeri tells New Times. “It’s a bad joke among college kids.”
A spokesperson for FIU tells New Times, “Federal student privacy laws and pending litigation prohibit us from answering your questions.” Saldana’s public defender declined to comment.
In an interview, Charlotte Arneson, program officer of campus rights advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, says in her view the university should not have intervened in either case — the Netanyahu comment or the racist chat.
“The First Amendment protects talking about violence, descriptions, glorification, and hyperbolic speech about violence,” she adds. “It certainly protects jokes and jokes about or directed at state leaders.”
She warns that these decisions can be viewed as arbitrary and have a chilling effect on protected speech.
“You don’t know now what speech is going to be punished or not, and when or if it’s going to be punished, so it makes people more afraid and more likely to self-censor,” She tells New Times.
