US Halts Green Card Lottery Following Brown University Tragedy

Fri Dec 19 2025 23:34:17 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

In the wake of a mass shooting that claimed the lives of two students at Brown University, President Trump has ordered the suspension of the green card lottery program, citing concerns over safety and immigration policy. This decision follows the identification of the shooter, a former green card recipient.

Following a tragic mass shooting at Brown University, where two students were killed, President Trump has suspended the US green card lottery program. The shooter, Claudio Neves Valente, entered the country under this program, prompting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to pause the scheme to prevent further harm to American citizens. Valente was also a suspect in the death of an MIT professor just days before the incident at Brown.

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

The programme allocates up to 50,000 visas each year through a random selection process among entries from countries with low rates of immigration to the US. Noem noted that Trump had previously sought to end the scheme after a truck-ramming attack in 2017 in New York City, which similarly involved a DV1 visa holder.

Valente was found dead in a storage facility, reportedly from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, after police linked him to the shootings through evidence and public tips. His vehicle was identified via CCTV in both locations of the attacks.

Brown University President Christina Paxson reported that Valente had no current affiliation with the university, despite having studied there in the early 2000s. Two students were killed in the Brown University shooting, identified as Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18.