President Donald Trump has officially suspended the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (DV1), commonly known as the green card lottery, following a tragic mass shooting at Brown University. The decision comes after investigators linked the suspect, 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente, to the visa program.
Two students—Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18 were killed, and nine others were injured when a gunman opened fire in Brown University’s engineering building on December 13.
Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who entered the US via the lottery in 2017, was found dead Thursday in Salem, New Hampshire, from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Authorities believe Valente also murdered MIT Professor Nuno Loureiro in Brookline earlier this week. Both men had previously studied at the same university in Portugal.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed the suspension, stating the program is being paused to protect American citizens.
This is not the first time the administration has targeted the scheme; Noem cited the 2017 New York truck attack by Sayfullo Saipov (also a DV1 recipient) as a precedent for ending the program.
Brown University President Christina Paxson clarified that while the suspect was a PhD student in physics in the early 2000s, he had no current affiliation with the institution.
