Trump suspends U.S. green card lottery suspended after Brown shooting
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks during the House of Representatives’ Office of Homeland Security hearing titled “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland” on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on December 11, 2025.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she suspended the diversity visa program at the behest of President Donald Trump, saying the man suspected of killing two students at Brown University and an MIT professor was granted a visa.
Noem shared on X late Thursday that she had instructed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the (DV1) program “to ensure that no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
On December 13, two students were killed and nine others were injured when someone opened fire at the physics building at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Police later identified 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente as the suspect.
Valente was a former student of the university and was enrolled in the doctoral program. The university’s president, Christina H. Paxson, said she started the physics program in 2000. Valente is also suspected of killing MIT physics professor Nuno Loureiro, 47, at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, two days after the Brown shooting. Valente and Loureiro are believed to have studied at the same university in their native Portugal.
Authorities announced the suspect’s identity just hours after Valente was found dead in a warehouse in New Hampshire on Thursday, Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said. Weapons were also found at the scene.
“There is no longer a threat to the public,” the US attorney’s office in Boston said in a statement after Valente’s death was confirmed. Authorities believe Valente acted alone and did not disclose a motive for the murders.
Noem said Valente entered the United States through the DV1 program in 2017 and received a green card.
“In 2017, President Trump fought to end the DV1 program after an ISIS terrorist crashed the wrecker truck in New York, killing eight people,” he wrote on X.
The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (DV Program) allocates up to 50,000 immigrant visas each year. USCIS website.
The program is a lottery. Visas are randomly allocated to people from countries with low immigration rates to the United States.
— Dan Mangan contributed to this report.
