Trump halts Green Card Lottery program after shooting incidents at Brown University and MIT
President Donald Trump's administration suspends the US Green Card Lottery program following reports that the suspect in shootings at Brown University and MIT entered through the lottery system.
The Trump administration has officially suspended the Green Card Lottery (Diversity Immigrant Visa Program), citing concerns that the suspect in recent shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) entered the United States through the programme.
Kristi Noem, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, announced via platform X that she had instructed the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to temporarily halt the Diversity Visa Program. She explained that the decision was made to protect American citizens from individuals entering through a programme the government believes has failed and caused harm to the country.
This move follows the identification of the shooting suspect as Cláudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national and former Brown University student who obtained a Green Card via the lottery in 2017. Authorities discovered Valente’s body on Thursday, December 18, under circumstances believed to be consistent with a suicide.
"This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country," Noem stated in her post, adding that the suspension of the programme would "ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program."
The suspension of the Green Card Lottery, which historically granted permanent residency to 50,000 applicants worldwide annually, is the latest move by the Trump administration to tighten immigration policies in response to violence the government attributes to the perceived looseness of past laws.
