US suspends the Green Card Lottery following the shooting at Brown University
Trump suspends the diversity visa lottery after a suspect who entered the US through a program was connected to a firearms incident at Brown University.
After two students were killed in a shooting at Brown University, which brought the immigration program under increased criticism, President Donald Trump suspended the US green card lottery program.
Authorities made the decision after confirming that the suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, had entered the country in 2017 using the Diversity Immigrant Visa program and had subsequently been granted permanent status. Police believe Valente, 48, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after he was discovered dead in New Hampshire on Thursday.
The operation was halted at Trump’s request, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, to “ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.” She wrote on social media that Trump had long been against the plan and had tried to put an end to it after a fatal truck-ramming incident in New York City in 2017.
Through a random selection procedure, the diversity visa lottery offers up to 50,000 green cards each year to applicants from nations with historically low rates of immigration to the US.
Additionally, US authorities suspect Neves Valente of being behind the murder of Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earlier this week. About 50 miles from Providence, Rhode Island, Loureiro, 47, was shot and killed at his Brookline, Rhode Island, home.
After spotting the suspect’s rental automobile on CCTV footage close to both crime scenes, investigators connected the two crimes. Police found Valente’s body in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, along with two guns and a bag after a six-day manhunt spanning several states. According to Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, evidence found in a nearby car was linked to the Brown University massacre.
Although Valente had completed a doctoral program in physics at Brown University during the 2000–2001 academic year, she was not currently associated with the university, according to Christina Paxson, president of the university.
A shooter opened fire inside Brown’s engineering building during final exams on December 13, resulting in the mass shooting. Two students were slain: Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old Uzbek-American freshman, and Ella Cook, a 19-year-old from Alabama. There were nine further injuries.
