The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, has ordered the suspension of the green card lottery program at Donald Trump’s direction, saying it allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the US.
Suspect Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, initially entered the US on a student visa in 2000 and later became a permanent resident in 2017, according to Oscar Perez, the police chief in Providence, Rhode Island. Valente was found dead on Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem said on X.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals.
After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
The DV1 visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the US, many of them in Africa.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the US. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
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