Trump Suspends Green Card Lottery After MIT, Brown University Shooter Suspect's Entry

US President Donald Trump has suspended the green card lottery programme that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shooting to come to the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirsti Noem wrote in a post on social media X that at Trump’s direction, she has ordered the US Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the programme. “This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country”, she said of the MIT shooting suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.

Neves Valente, 48, is allegedly killed two students at the physics building at Brown University and wounded nine others, including one MIT professor, on Dec 13, 2025.

The officials reported that the shooter was found dead on Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He obtained legal permanent residence status in 2017 while entering the US through the DV1 program.

The diversity visa programme makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the US, many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move would invite legal challenges.

Approximately 20 million people reportedly applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected. The winners must undergo vetting to enter the United States.

Lottery winners invited to apply for a green card. They are further interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.

Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. He has also sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration, along with the illegal mass deportation.

In 2017, President Trump fought to end this program after the NYC truck ramming where the accused also entered under the DV1 program.