Trump Administration Pauses Green Card Lottery After Brown University Shooter Arrest

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she is moving to suspend the Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV1) program following the mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor — two crimes investigators now believe were carried out by the same person.

In a post on X on Thursday, Dec. 18, Noem said the suspect, identified by authorities as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card.”

“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she added.

Noem said that in 2017, President Donald Trump sought to end the program after a deadly truck attack in New York City that killed eight people. “At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” she wrote.

The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, often called the “diversity lottery,” randomly selects applicants from countries with lower rates of immigration to the United States. Up to 50,000 immigrant visas are available annually, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website.

The New York Times has described the program as one of the faster routes to permanent legal residence, attracting millions of applicants each year.

The program was established by Congress in 1990. CBS News reported that it is “not clear under what legal mechanism” Noem can pause the program. The outlet also noted that most diversity visas are issued by the State Department, which runs the lottery, while a smaller number of cases involving applicants already in the U.S. are processed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Trump called for the program to be eliminated during his first term, including after the New York City attack in which Sayfullo Saipov drove onto a Manhattan bike path, killing eight people and injuring 11. Saipov entered the U.S. through the lottery program.

Authorities say Neves Valente was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Thursday inside a storage facility in New Hampshire. FBI Boston Special Agent in Charge Ted Docks said Neves Valente was a former Brown University student from Portugal.

Brown University President Christina Paxson said at a Thursday evening press conference that Neves Valente attended the university from 2000 to 2001 as a graduate student in the physics department. Referring to the Barus and Holley building — where the shooting took place — Paxson said it was reasonable to believe he spent significant time there while he was a student.

Investigators allege Neves Valente entered the building at around 4 p.m. on Dec. 13 and opened fire in a lecture hall as about 60 students were preparing to leave study sessions. Two people were killed and nine others were wounded, authorities said.

Officials also suspect Neves Valente in the killing of MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, who was also born in Portugal. Loureiro was fatally shot on Monday evening, Dec. 15, in Brookline, Massachusetts, authorities said.

Investigators said the case began to come into focus after law enforcement shared an image of someone who had crossed paths with the suspect on Dec. 13 and asked that person to come forward. That individual, investigators said, helped identify the suspect’s car.

Authorities then determined the same vehicle had been rented in Boston before it was driven to Providence and later to Brookline over the past week.