Green card lottery halted by Trump after MIT, Brown suspect entered US

WASHINGTON, Dec 19: President Donald Trump has suspended the US diversity visa (green card lottery) programme after the Brown University and MIT shootings involving Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that, at Trump’s direction, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is pausing the programme, describing Valente as a “heinous individual” who should never have been allowed into the country.
Valente, 48, is suspected of killing two Brown University students and an MIT professor, and wounding nine others. He was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Valente studied at Brown on a student visa in 2000 and received a diversity visa in 2017, later gaining permanent residence. His whereabouts between leaving Brown in 2001 and obtaining the visa remain unclear.
The diversity visa lottery, created by Congress, grants up to 50,000 green cards annually to applicants from underrepresented countries, with winners subject to vetting and consular interviews. Nearly 20 million applied for the 2025 lottery. Trump has long opposed the programme and other legal immigration avenues, using such incidents to advance stricter immigration policies and is challenging birthright citizenship in the Supreme Court. (AP)