Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that, by order of President Donald Trump, she has ordered the suspension of the Green Card Diversity Visa Lottery program.
The decision follows confirmation by authorities that the suspected perpetrator of deadly attacks at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had entered the United States and obtained permanent residency through this program.
The suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, initially entered the U.S. on a student visa in 2000 and later became a permanent resident in 2017, according to Oscar Perez, police chief of Providence, Rhode Island. Valente was found dead on Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“This horrific individual should never have been allowed into our country,” Noem wrote on X.
Trump has long opposed the Diversity Visa Lottery program.
After an Afghan man was identified as the individual who fatally shot members of the National Guard in November, the Trump administration imposed broad immigration restrictions on Afghanistan and several other countries.
The DV-1 Diversity Visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year through a lottery for people from countries that are underrepresented in the United States, many of them in Africa.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 individuals selected, including spouses of winners. Those selected must then undergo screening before being admitted to the United States.
