A Miami resident receives two years in federal prison for threatening to kill Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to the press during the G7 foreign ministers' summit at the George C. Marshall Center at the Talleyrand Hotel in Paris, France, on November 10, 2026. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Pool via REUTERSA 47-year-old man residing in Miami was sentenced to two years in federal prison for making death threats against U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. The messages, posted on the social network X, even set the exact time at which both officials would be executed. Federal Judge Beth Bloom handed down the sentence against Jon Christopher Enriquez after the defendant pleaded guilty to three counts of transmitting threats through interstate communications, according to the EFE agency. The posts, published on May 27, mentioned supposed executions of Rubio and Noem and specified concrete time slots for carrying them out. One of the messages directed at Rubio questioned his statements about Cuba: "Before you start thinking that the United States owns Cuba and start saying garbage and calling Cuba a failure, the Military Criminal Tribunal is going to begin an investigation into you as a failure to your nation," Enriquez wrote, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida cited by EFE. In another post, the defendant claimed that Rubio and Noem had been found guilty of "seditious conspiracy" and cited Title 18, Section 2384, of the United States Code. That message announced that both would be executed at 4:30 p.m. A 47-year-old man residing in Miami was sentenced to two years in federal prison for making death threats against U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)Enriquez insisted with a third text directed at Rubio: "I guess the only way to get you to shut your mouth is through death." The last post indicated a new execution time, 4:00 p.m., and mentioned the Telemundo channel so it could keep an eye on the supposed plan. The court case was registered under number 26-cr-20239 before the Southern District of Florida Court. Federal prosecutor Jason A. Reding Quiñones defended the judicial action and rejected the idea that the posts could be protected by freedom of speech. "Threatening to execute public officials is not freedom of speech, it is a federal crime," the official stated, according to the Spanish agency. The messages, posted on the social network X, even set the exact time at which both officials would be executed. (Illustrative Image Infobae)The position Noem held at the time of the threats no longer corresponds to her current role. She was Secretary of Homeland Security from January 2025 until March 2026, when Trump removed her from that responsibility and appointed her as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas initiative. That appointment expired in September. A State Department official confirmed to CBS News that Noem no longer serves as special envoy, although she remains linked to the project as senior advisor to the Under Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, as reported by Noticias SIN, a Dominican portal. Enriquez's episode adds to another federal case involving threats against U.S. government officials. In February, a federal grand jury indicted Shannon Mathre, 33, a resident of Toledo, Ohio, for threatening to assassinate Vice President JD Vance during a visit by him to that state. According to the Department of Justice, cited by EFE, Mathre expressed the intention to locate the vice president and use an M14 automatic rifle to kill him. Secret Service agents arrested her, and during the investigation, they also found multiple digital files containing child sexual abuse materials in her possession. Mathre faces charges for threatening to take the life of and cause physical harm to the Vice President of the United States. The threats against Rubio did not occur in a vacuum. The Secretary of State has been concentrating the White House's strategy toward Havana for months, a matter that escalated this week. On Thursday, Donald Trump stated in a telephone interview with Salem News Channel, an American radio network, that he wants to "get the Cuba thing resolved" before leaving the presidency in January 2029. The president called Cuba a "failed country" and indicated that he would not rule out a military intervention on the island. Miguel Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro watch as Donald Trump and Marco Rubio point at Cuba, represented with chains, padlocks, and symbols of economic sanctions. (Illustrative Image Infobae)Days earlier, from Paris, in the framework of a G7 foreign ministers' summit, Rubio had maintained that the instability of the Cuban model "represents a threat to the national security" of the United States and conditioned the lifting of the embargo on political and economic reforms on the island. The Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, responded on X that "the future of Cuba will never be decided in the north."