The Trump administration announced an immediate pause to the U.S. diversity visa green card lottery on Thursday, citing the case of a Portuguese national suspected in a mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor who, officials say, entered the country through the DV1 program in 2017.
Homeland security chief Kristi Noem said in a social media post that Claudio Neves Valente, 48, “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card.” Calling him a “heinous individual” who “should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem added: “At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
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Authorities say Neves Valente burst into a building at Brown last Saturday and opened fire on students, killing two and wounding nine, then two days later fatally shot MIT professor Nuno Loureiro at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. After a days-long manhunt that spanned multiple states, Neves Valente was found dead by suicide in a New Hampshire storage unit, alongside two firearms, Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said. Investigators believe he acted alone.
At a Boston briefing, U.S. attorney Leah Foley said Neves Valente studied at Brown “on an F1 (student) visa around 2000 to 2021” and “eventually obtained legal permanent resident status,” without elaborating further. Foley said Neves Valente had attended the “same academic program… in Portugal between 1995 and 2000” as Loureiro. Authorities have not identified a motive.
Brown identified the student victims as Ella Cook, vice president of the university’s Republican Party association, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, originally from Uzbekistan, who had hoped to become a neurosurgeon. Six of the wounded remained hospitalized in stable condition and three had been released, President Christina Paxson said. “Nothing can fully bring closure to the lives that have been shattered by last weekend’s gun violence,” Paxson said. “Now, however, our community has the opportunity to move forward and begin a path of repair, recovery and healing.”
Investigators released images of a person of interest and another individual seen nearby in an effort to trace them, and officials expressed mounting frustration as the search stretched on. “The groundwork that started in the city of Providence… led us to that connection,” Perez said, crediting a trail of financial data and video surveillance gathered at both crime scenes. Foley said Neves Valente was “sophisticated in hiding his tracks,” switching license plates on a rental vehicle and using a phone that was difficult to trace. An initially detained man was later released without charges.
The shootings put a spotlight on campus security after it emerged none of Brown’s 1,200 security cameras are linked to police surveillance systems — a gap that drew criticism, including from President Trump. The events also revived the nation’s stalemated debate over guns; the Gun Violence Archive has recorded more than 300 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, defined as incidents in which four or more people are shot.
Noem pointed to Trump’s earlier efforts to end the diversity visa program after the 2017 New York City truck attack, saying the assailant “entered under the DV1 program, and murdered eight people.” The diversity lottery, which includes Ireland among eligible countries, issues up to 50,000 visas annually to applicants from nations with historically low levels of U.S. immigration.
USCIS did not immediately provide details on the duration of the pause or how many applicants could be affected.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
