Donald Trump halts US green card lottery in wake of Brown–MIT shootings

In the wake of a tragic and shocking series of shootings at Brown University and MIT, US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the suspension of the green card diversity lottery programme, the very mechanism that had allowed the alleged shooter to enter the United States.

Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem announced on the social platform X that, at the president’s direction, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has been instructed to pause the programme. “This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem said, referring to Claudio Neves Valente, the 48-year-old Portuguese national suspected in the shootings that claimed the lives of two Brown University students and an MIT professor, while leaving nine others wounded. Authorities later confirmed that Neves Valente took his own life Thursday evening.

Neves Valente had initially studied at Brown University on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was awarded a diversity immigrant visa, and months later, he obtained legal permanent resident status. The details of his whereabouts between his 2001 leave of absence from Brown and the 2017 visa remain unclear.

The diversity visa programme, created by Congress, annually offers up to 50,000 green cards via lottery to nationals from countries underrepresented in the United States, with many winners hailing from Africa. For the 2025 cycle, nearly 20 million people applied, with over 131,000 selected when including spouses. Portuguese citizens secured just 38 slots. Lottery winners undergo rigorous vetting, interviews at consulates, and must meet the same stringent requirements as other green-card applicants.

President Trump has long been an outspoken critic of the diversity visa lottery, and this latest action underscores his enduring effort to reshape US immigration policy, even when the programme is enshrined in law. Observers note that tragedy has repeatedly served as a catalyst for policy shifts, citing his administration’s sweeping restrictions following a fatal attack by an Afghan gunman in November.

While pursuing broad immigration curbs, including mass deportation, Trump has persistently sought to limit or eliminate legal pathways to the US, whether codified in law, as with the diversity visa lottery, or enshrined constitutionally, as in the case of birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court has now agreed to hear his challenge to the latter, signaling a continuing and far-reaching debate over the country’s immigration framework.

This suspension, unprecedented in scope, places the diversity visa programme under renewed scrutiny, raising legal and political questions, while also highlighting the delicate balance between national security and humanitarian immigration policy.

With PTI inputs