Trump suspends green card visa lottery after shooting at Brown University

The Trump administration has ordered the suspension of the diversity visa program — more commonly known as the green card lottery — after authorities confirmed that the suspect in a shooting at Brown University and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor obtained permanent U.S. residency through the program.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the decision in a post on X, saying she was acting “at President Trump’s direction.” “This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem wrote, referring to Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese man identified by authorities as the perpetrator of the attacks. She added that she had ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to immediately pause the visa program “to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”

The announcement came hours after authorities confirmed that Neves Valente had been found dead in a storage unit in New Hampshire, with a gunshot wound that law enforcement officials described as self-inflicted.

According to court documents and official statements, Neves Valente first entered the United States in 2000 on a student visa to pursue graduate studies at Brown University, where he later carried out the December 13 shooting that left two students dead. Brown University President Christina H. Paxson said the man enrolled in a Ph.D. program in physics but took a leave of absence in the spring of 2001 and formally withdrew two years later. It remains unclear where he lived or what he did in the years that followed, until he was selected for the Diversity Visa Program in 2017 and obtained lawful permanent resident status months later.

What is the diversity visa lottery, and how many people receive visas?

The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program was created by Congress in the 1990s with the goal of diversifying immigration flows to the United States. Each year, it makes up to 50,000 visas available — in some official counts, up to 55,000 — for individuals from countries with historically low levels of immigration to the U.S. Recipients are chosen at random through a lottery system, but must later meet minimum education or work requirements, complete consular interviews, and undergo security vetting similar to that required of other green card applicants.

For the 2025 lottery, nearly 20 million people submitted applications, and more than 131,000 individuals were selected, including spouses and family members. In the case of Portugal, Neves Valente’s country of origin, only 38 slots were awarded that year.

The decision to suspend the program has raised legal questions. While Noem directed USCIS — an agency within her department — to halt the program’s implementation, most diversity visas are administered by the State Department, and the program itself is established by an act of Congress. As a result, immigration experts and advocacy organizations say the move is likely to face legal challenges in court.

This is not the first time Donald Trump has sought to dismantle the diversity visa program. The president has long criticized the lottery, arguing that it is not merit-based and could pose security risks. In 2017, he urged Congress to eliminate the program following a deadly attack in New York carried out by a man who had entered the United States through the same visa system. During the Covid pandemic, Trump temporarily suspended the issuance of diversity visas as part of broader restrictions on legal immigration — a policy that was reversed in 2021 by Democratic President Joe Biden.

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