The Trump administration has suspended the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program after it was revealed that the suspect in the fatal Brown University shooting entered the United States through the program, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced.
Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente is suspected of being the shooter who killed two students and wounded nine others at Brown University on December 13. Valente entered the U.S. through the diversity visa program in 2017 and was later granted a green card. He had previously studied in a PhD program at Brown but did not complete his degree.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are underrepresented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The program was created by Congress, and the suspension is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
"That's potentially thousands of people who are now in limbo not knowing whether their status will continue to be processed and if they'll be allowed to come to the United States," said Elizabeth Shaw, an immigration attorney. Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected including spouses.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery, and critics say this announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. The shooting suspect was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after also being linked to an attack at MIT.
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