US President Donald Trump has suspended the green card lottery program after officials said the suspect in the shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had entered the country through that system.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said late on Thursday that, at Trump’s direction, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services would immediately halt the Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV1) program, which allows lottery winners to become permanent US residents.
Noem’s announcement followed a five-day manhunt for 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente, who authorities suspect killed two students and wounded nine others in a shooting at Brown University on Saturday before fatally shooting MIT professor Nuno Loureiro two days later in Brookline, Massachusetts. Officials said the suspect later took his own life and was found dead in New Hampshire with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem wrote on X, referring to Valente.
According to a court affidavit cited by authorities, Valente initially came to the US on a student visa in 2000 and later won a green card through the Diversity Visa Lottery in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 immigrant visas available each year by lottery to people from countries with low immigration rates to the US. Winners and their spouses undergo vetting and interviews before being admitted.
Noem said the halt is intended to “ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” adding that Trump had long opposed the lottery.
The move follows broader immigration restrictions by the Trump administration in recent weeks, including tightened reviews of other legal immigration pathways after a separate shooting incident in Washington, D.C., involved a suspect who came to the US via a different immigration program.
Trump launched a crackdown on illegal immigration after returning to the White House in January. He has ramped up immigration raids and vowed to carry out the largest deportation in US history, while prioritizing the removal of dangerous criminals.
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