Trump suspends green card lottery program following Brown University, MIT shootings

Officials give update after MIT, Brown shootings linked

Officials said at a news conference that the suspect responsible for the deadly shooting at Brown University, which resulted in the deaths of two students and injuries to nine others, was found dead on Thursday evening. Investigators confirmed the suspect had taken his own life inside a New Hampshire storage facility.

President Donald Trump has suspended the green card lottery program that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.

On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she was ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program.

Trump pauses green card lottery program

What they're saying:

"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," she wrote. 

She continued: "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."

In 2017, President Trump fought to end this program, following the devastating NYC truck ramming by an ISIS terrorist, who entered under the DV1 program, and murdered eight people. 

Who was the Brown University gunman?

Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.

Neves Valente was a former student at Brown and was a Portuguese national, officials said during a news conference on Thursday evening.

He studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.

FILE - The Barus and Holley building at Brown University on Dec. 17, 2025. (Photo by Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

He was found dead with a satchel which contained two firearms, officials said. 

Valente was enrolled at Brown in 2000 before he formally withdrew in 2003. He was pursuing a Ph.D. in physics. He was in the United States on a student visa and had applied for a green card. 

His most recent previous address was in Miami, Florida.

 What we don't know:A motive was not immediately known. 

Green card lottery program

The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.

Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.

Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.

Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance 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 rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.