President Donald Trump has ordered the suspension of the US green card lottery programme after a mass shooting at Brown University last week left two people dead.
The suspect, 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente, who was found dead on Thursday, had entered the United States through the Diversity Visa (DV1) lottery programme in 2017 and was granted a green card.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the decision to pause the programme was taken to “ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous programme.”
Authorities also suspect Valente of killing Portuguese MIT professor Nuno Loureiro earlier this week.
The DV1 lottery allocates up to 50,000 visas annually through a random selection process for applicants from countries with low rates of US immigration.
Noem highlighted that Trump had previously pushed to end the lottery in 2017 after a truck-ramming attack in New York City killed eight people. The attacker, Uzbek national Sayfullo Saipov, an Islamic State supporter, had also entered the US through the DV1 scheme and is now serving multiple life sentences.
