Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / Getty Images
A leaked group chat involving several conservative student leaders at Florida International University contained repeated racist slurs, explicit threats against Black people and references to Nazi ideology, according to an investigation by the Miami Herald.
The messages were exchanged in a WhatsApp chat created last fall by Abel Carvajal, the secretary of the Miami-Dade County Republican Party and a law student at FIU, the newspaper reported. Within weeks, conversations in the group reportedly escalated into racist language and extremist commentary among participants connected to campus Republican organizations.
According to the Miami Herald, the chat logs show participants using variations of the n-word hundreds of times while also making antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ remarks. One member of the group, William Bejerano, allegedly posted a lengthy message describing multiple graphic methods for killing Black people, repeatedly using the n-word while detailing acts such as beheading, crucifixion and other forms of violence.
When contacted by the Miami Herald, Bejerano hung up the phone and did not respond to further questions. Other members of the chat reacted to the message in a casual tone. Dariel Gonzalez, who at the time served as recruitment chair for FIU’s College Republicans, replied in the group: “How edgy.”
The messages, reviewed by the Miami Herald, also show Gonzalez making several racist comments in other parts of the conversation, including:
“Ew you had colored professors?!”
“I reguse [sic] to be indoctrinated by the coloreds.”
He later added: “Avoid the coloreds like the plague.”
The group chat also included antisemitic comments directed at Jewish people. At one point, Gonzalez wrote: “You can f**k all the [k-word] you want. Just don’t marry them and procreate.”
Ian Valdes, president of FIU’s Turning Point USA chapter, responded: “I would def not marry a Jew.” The chat name itself was later changed by Valdes to “Gooning in Agartha.” According to the Herald, Gonzalez described “Agartha” to members as “Nazi heaven sort of,” while Valdes referred to it as “esoteric nazism essentially.”
Experts told the newspaper that the reference is closely associated with white supremacist mythology. “This is not something you would know about unless you had spent a considerable amount of time in white supremacist circles,” Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said. “If you’re using the term Agartha, you have spent some time reading about white supremacy and Nazis.”
The conversations also included discussions about immigration and race in politics.
At one point, Valdes wrote: “We need to have a moratorium on immigration temporarily unless it’s someone from a first world country.”
He later clarified his comment by adding, “Yeah I obviously mean whites.”
Carvajal, the county Republican Party secretary who created the group chat, told the Miami Herald he had not been aware of the most extreme messages until reporters contacted him about the logs months later.
“It’s been five months since this was sent and this is the first time I’ve seen this message,” Carvajal said while reviewing the chat history with a reporter.
“I guess to an extent, I bear some responsibility, cause I created a chat,” he added. “But if I had seen this at the moment, I would have removed [Bejerano] from the chat.”
According to the Miami Herald, records from the chat show Carvajal participated occasionally and removed multiple messages from the thread, though the full scope of deleted content is unclear.
Florida International University confirmed the messages are now being reviewed as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. “The university takes very seriously any allegation of discriminatory conduct,” FIU media relations director Madeline Baró said in a statement to the newspaper. “The alleged conduct is under review and will be addressed in accordance with the university’s policies and applicable law.”
Local Republican leaders have also denounced the comments. Miami-Dade County Republican Party Chairman Kevin Cooper told the Miami Herald that anyone connected to the chat should step down.
“I am shocked and appalled at these statements,” Cooper said. “Racism and antisemitism have no place in the Republican Party.”
The leaked conversations also suggest some participants were aware that the messages could cause backlash if they became public. “If this chat gets leaked we’re so cooked lmao,” Valdes wrote in one exchange. Gonzalez replied: “This isnt even my worst one.”
Valdes responded: “I’m in a few on telegram that are definitely worse.”
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