Suspension of US Green Card Lottery Following Brown University Shooting

Sat Dec 20 2025 14:21:09 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

In response to a tragic mass shooting at Brown University that resulted in two fatalities, President Trump has officially suspended the diversity visa lottery program. The shooter, a Portugal native, had gained entry to the US through this program.

The US Green Card lottery scheme has been suspended following a mass shooting at Brown University, which left two students dead. The shooter, Claudio Neves Valente, entered the US via the diversity visa program and is accused of further violence against an MIT professor. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem cited the need to protect Americans from such threats as a key reason for the suspension.

President Donald Trump has suspended the US green card lottery scheme in the wake of a mass shooting at Brown University last week in which two people were killed.

The suspect, a Portuguese man who was found dead on Thursday, entered the country through the diversity lottery immigrant visa programme (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she has paused the visa scheme under Trump's direction to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous programme.

US officials said they believe the suspect, 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente, also killed Portuguese Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno Loureiro earlier this week.

The programme makes up to 50,000 visas available each year through a random selection process among entries from countries with low rates of immigration to the US.

Writing on social media, Noem stated Trump had previously fought to end the scheme in 2017 after a deadly truck-ramming attack in New York City.

Neves Valente was found dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, from what police believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound, following a six-day manhunt.

The violence began with the shooting at Brown University on December 13, during final exams, where two students were killed. They have been identified as Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18.