United States President Donald Trump has suspended the green card lottery programme, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Noem said the action was taken at Trump’s direction, instructing the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to pause the Diversity Visa (DV) programme.
The decision follows reports linking Claudio Neves Valente, a permanent U.S. resident originally from Portugal, to shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The incidents reportedly left two students and nine other people injured.
Valente entered the United States on a student visa in 2000 and became a permanent resident 17 years later through the green card system. Authorities later confirmed that the 48-year-old was found dead.
Reacting to the development, Noem wrote on X: “This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country.”
The Diversity Visa programme, also known as the green card lottery, makes at least 50,000 immigrant visas available each year to applicants from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States.
