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Trump suspends green card lottery program that let Brown University shooting suspect into US
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has been ordered to pause the green card lottery program.
On directions from US President Donald Trump, a diversity visa green card lottery program has been suspended in the United States. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program.
The development came days after a deadly shooting at the Brown University killed two students and wounded nine others. The suspect in the shootings was identified as 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente, who was also linked to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Nuno Loureiro's death.
Valente reportedly obtained legal permanent residence status in 2017. Kristi Noem said that the suspected shooter entered the US through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) and later obtained a green card.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country. In 2017, President Trump fought to end this program, following the devastating NYC truck ramming by an ISIS terrorist, who entered under the DV1 program, and murdered eight people,” Noem wrote.
Suspected shooter Claudio found dead
After days of an intensified probe into the Brown University shooting, and search that spanned several New England states, the suspect, Claudio Neves Valente was found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Thursday (local time).
Portuguese by origin, Claudio was once a student at the Brown University, enrolled from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001, according to news agency AP.
He was not only accused of the deadly shooting at the university that left 2 students dead, but is also being linked to the killing of an MIT professor two days later at his Brookline home, nearly 50 miles (80 kilometers) away.
What is the green card lottery program?
The diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) green card lottery program that is now under suspension in the US awards up to 50,000 visas annually. According to the UCSIS, the program specifically caters to people from countries with low rates of immigration to America.
“Most lottery winners reside outside the United States and immigrate through consular processing and issuance of an immigrant visa,” the website reads.
