President Donald Trump has ordered the suspension of the U.S. green card diversity lottery following last week’s mass shooting at Brown University that left two students dead.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the visa programme was paused under Trump’s direction to prevent further harm, calling the scheme “disastrous.” The suspected gunman, 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente, entered the United States in 2017 through the Diversity Visa Lottery (DV1) and later obtained a green card.
U.S. authorities believe Neves Valente was also responsible for the killing of MIT professor Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro earlier this week. Neves Valente was found dead on Thursday in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, from what police say was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, ending a six-day multi-state manhunt.
The diversity visa programme grants up to 50,000 visas annually through a random selection process for applicants from countries with historically low U.S. immigration rates. Noem said Trump had previously pushed to eliminate the programme after the 2017 New York truck attack that killed eight people. The perpetrator of that attack, Uzbek national Sayfullo Saipov, also entered the U.S. via the DV1 scheme.
Investigators said surveillance footage and public tips led them to identify Neves Valente through a rental car linked to both crime scenes. He was found with two firearms and a satchel, and evidence recovered from a nearby vehicle matched materials from the Brown University shooting, according to Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha.
Brown University President Christina Paxson confirmed Neves Valente had been enrolled at the university between 2000 and 2001 as a physics PhD student but had no current affiliation. Authorities believe he shot and killed MIT professor Loureiro, 47, at his Brookline, Massachusetts home two days after the Brown attack. Both men studied at the same university in Portugal in the late 1990s.
The motive for the attacks has not been disclosed. The Brown University shooting occurred on December 13 when a gunman opened fire inside an engineering building during final exams. The victims were identified as Ella Cook, 19, a sophomore from Alabama, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, an Uzbek-American first-year student. Nine others were injured.
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