Diversity visa lottery program to be suspended in US

WASHINGTON, United States (MNTV) – The United States has announced it will suspend the diversity visa lottery program that allowed a man believed to be behind both a mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor to enter the United States.

Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old former Brown University student and Portuguese national, is accused of bursting into a building at the Ivy League school on Saturday and opening fire on students, killing two and wounding nine others.

He is also accused of killing a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) two days later.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on social media Thursday that Neves Valente “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV-1) in 2017 and was granted a green card.”

Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses of the winners. After being selected, applicants must undergo vetting to gain admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots in the most recent lottery.

Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card and are interviewed at US consulates, where they are subject to the same requirements and vetting procedures as other green card applicants.

The lottery program grants up to 55,000 permanent resident visas annually to people “from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States,” according to the State Department.

Noem described Neves Valente, who police said Thursday was found dead by suicide after a days-long manhunt, as a “heinous individual” who “should never have been allowed in our country.”

“At President (Donald) Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) to pause the DV-1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” Noem declared.

Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery program. Noem’s announcement represents the latest example of the administration using tragedy to advance its immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping restrictions on immigration from Afghanistan and other countries.

While pursuing mass deportation efforts, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred even when they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or in the Constitution, as with the right to citizenship for anyone born on US soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his administration’s challenge to birthright citizenship.

US Attorney Leah Foley said at a press briefing Thursday that Neves Valente studied at Brown University “on an F-1 (student) visa from around 2000 to 2021” and that “he eventually obtained legal permanent resident status,” though she did not provide further detail on the timeline.

Foley added that Neves Valente had also attended the “same academic program… in Portugal between 1995 and 2000” as the MIT professor, Nuno Loureiro, who was shot and killed in his home in Brookline, in the greater Boston metropolitan area.

There was no immediate indication of a motive in the shootings that rattled the elite New England campuses and sparked a massive multi-state manhunt.

Neves Valente’s body was found at a storage unit in New Hampshire along with two firearms. He died by suicide, Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez confirmed Thursday, and is believed to have acted alone in both attacks.

The two student victims from Brown University were Ella Cook, vice president of the university’s Republican Party association, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, originally from Uzbekistan, who had aspired to become a neurosurgeon.

Six of the wounded remained hospitalized in stable condition, while three have been released, Brown University President Christina Paxson said in a statement Thursday.

Investigators released images of a person of interest and an individual who was seen standing near that person in an effort to identify and trace them during the investigation.

For days, officials voiced their mounting frustration with the seemingly endless manhunt that spanned multiple states.

The case finally broke open thanks to a trail of financial data and video surveillance footage gathered at both crime scenes.

“The groundwork that started in the city of Providence… led us to that connection,” Perez explained.

In Boston, Foley said Neves Valente had been “sophisticated in hiding his tracks” throughout the investigation.

He switched the license plates on his rental vehicle at one point and was using a phone that investigators had considerable difficulty tracking.

Authorities initially detained a different man in connection with the shooting but later released him without charges.

Brown University has faced pointed questions, including from President Trump, about its security arrangements after it emerged that none of its 1,200 security cameras were linked to the police department’s surveillance system.

There have been more than 300 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot.

Attempts to restrict access to firearms continue to face political deadlock in Congress.

“Nothing can fully bring closure to the lives that have been shattered by last weekend’s gun violence,” said Paxson, Brown’s president.

“Now, however, our community has the opportunity to move forward and begin a path of repair, recovery, and healing.”