The US government has suspended the Diversity Visa (DV) lottery program following the fatal shootings near Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, acting on the direction of President Donald Trump.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the move, stating that the program had enabled the suspect to enter and remain in the United States. “This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem said in a post on X.
Authorities identified the suspect as Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national. According to Providence, Rhode Island Police Chief Oscar Perez, Valente entered the United States on a student visa in 2000 and later obtained permanent resident status in 2017. He was found dead on Thursday evening from what police described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
President Trump has long been critical of the diversity visa lottery, which he argues poses security risks. The suspension follows a broader pattern in which his administration has used violent incidents to justify tighter immigration measures. Previously, after a November attack involving an Afghan national that killed National Guard members, the administration imposed strict immigration restrictions on Afghanistan and several other countries.
The DV lottery program allocates up to 50,000 green cards each year through a random selection process for applicants from countries with low levels of immigration to the United States, many of them in Africa. For the 2025 lottery, nearly 20 million people applied worldwide, with more than 131,000 selected when including family members. Portuguese citizens secured only 38 of those slots.Applicants selected through the lottery are invited to apply for permanent residency and must undergo interviews at US consulates, along with the same security checks and eligibility requirements applied to other green card applicants.
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