By Ahmet Salih Alacaci
WASHINGTON – The US on Thursday announced the immediate suspension of the diversity lottery immigrant visa program, claiming that the suspected gunman linked to three killings at the northeastern Brown University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had entered the country through that system.
“The Brown University shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card. This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) Kristi Noem said on US social media company X.
“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” she added.
A hallmark of Donald Trump’s two terms as president has been repeated claims of an “immigrant crime wave,” though statistics show that immigrants are statistically less likely to commit crimes than non-immigrants. Critics say his cherry-picking to find the worst crimes committed by immigrants amounts to demonization of a largely law-abiding community.
Noem did not provide procedural details about how long the pause will last or what mechanism the DHS is invoking. The DV-1 program was created by Congress, and any permanent change or repeal would require legislative action.
According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website, the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program makes up to 50,000 immigrant visas available every year.
Noem’s announcement came after a five-day manhunt that led authorities to 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente, who authorities suspect killed two students and wounded nine others in a mass shooting at Brown University on Saturday, before allegedly murdering MIT Professor Nuno Loureiro two days later in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Neves-Valente was found dead in a New Hampshire storage unit on Thursday, alongside firearms and evidence linking him to the attacks.
Peter Neronha, the attorney general for Rhode Island, where Brown is located, told a Thursday news briefing that Neves-Valente had initially entered the US on a student visa but was later granted lawful permanent resident status in September 2017.
Since taking office for a second term this January, Trump has launched a controversial crackdown on irregular migrants – sweeping up some people legally in the US in the process – as well as tightened programs for refugees and entries from some countries.
On Tuesday, he signed a proclamation that further restricts and limits the entry of foreign nationals to the US from five additional countries – Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria – in addition to an initial list of 12 countries