Trump orders suspension of U.S. green card lottery

U.S. President Donald Trump has directed the Department of Homeland Security to suspend the Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV1) program following a deadly shooting at Brown University, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Thursday.

Noem said the alleged gunman, identified as Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, had entered the United States through the DV1 program in 2017 and was later granted a green card. Two students were killed and nine others wounded when shots were fired at Brown University’s physics building in Providence, Rhode Island, on December 13.

Posting on X, Noem said she had instructed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program “to ensure no more Americans are harmed,” describing the lottery system as “disastrous.”

Police said Valente, 48, was a former Brown University student who had previously been enrolled in a Ph.D. program in physics in 2000. Authorities also believe he fatally shot MIT physics professor Nuno Loureiro, 47, at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, two days after the Brown University attack. The two men are believed to have attended the same university in Portugal.

Valente was found dead on Thursday inside a storage facility in New Hampshire, Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said, adding that firearms were recovered at the scene. Authorities believe he acted alone and said there is no ongoing threat to the public. No motive has been disclosed.

Referring to a previous attack, Noem said Trump had attempted to end the DV program in 2017 following a deadly truck-ramming incident in New York City involving an attacker who had also entered the U.S. through the lottery system.

The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program allocates up to 50,000 immigrant visas annually through a random selection process, targeting applicants from countries with historically low levels of immigration to the United States.