A Florida student is now staring down a possible 15-year prison sentence after what she claims was just a bad joke about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Gabriela Saldana, a 23-year-old at Florida International University, was arrested on April 17, 2026, after two messages she sent in a 215-person student WhatsApp group chat triggered a full-blown campus police response.
The charge? A second-degree felony for written threats to kill or do bodily harm, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 15 years behind bars. The messages themselves read like something you might expect from a frustrated student blowing off steam, but the legal system, and FIU, saw them very differently.
