The Trump administration has officially suspended the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (known as the Green Card Lottery). The reason for this decision was that the suspect in the recent shooting at Brown University entered the United States through this program. This was announced on December 19 by US Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem, Bloomberg reports.
Christy Noem has appealed to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services to suspend the lottery.
“This despicable individual should never have been allowed into our country,” Noem said on the social network X. She emphasized that the purpose of the ban is “to ensure that no more Americans are harmed by this program.”
Authorities identified the shooter as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese citizen. He was a former Brown University student.
Received a green card through a lottery in 2017.
Valente is suspected of murdering a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The suspension of the lottery, which annually granted up to 50,000 visas, is another step in the new administration’s strict immigration policy. Trump has consistently used high-profile crimes involving foreigners as an argument for closing the borders.