President Donald Trump has ordered the suspension of the Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV) program, commonly known as the green card lottery.
This comes after revelations that the suspect in the recent shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, entered the United States through the program.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem stated.
She added that the suspension would remain in effect until further notice, though no timeline was provided for its duration.
Green Card Lottery Program
The Diversity Visa program, established under the Immigration Act of 1990, allocates up to 50,000 permanent resident visas annually through a lottery system.
It is designed to increase immigration from countries with historically low rates of migration to the United States.
Applicants must meet basic eligibility requirements, including a high school education or equivalent and two years of qualifying work experience.
Winners are selected randomly and may include spouses and children as dependents.
According to official figures by the USCIS, approximately 20 million individuals applied for the 2025 lottery, resulting in about 131,000 selected entrants when dependents were counted.
The green card lottery program has long been a target of criticism from opponents who argue that it prioritizes chance over merit and poses security risks.
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Calls to replace the lottery with a merit-based immigration system have been a recurring theme in congress debates, particularly during Trump’s first term in office.
U.S’ Continued Campus Shootings
The suspension comes in the wake of two fatal shootings that shocked academic communities in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
Authorities allege that Claudio Manuel Neves Valente opened fire at Brown University before carrying out a second attack at MIT.
Valente, 48, is a Portuguese national and former Brown University PhD physics student. According to immigration records, he first arrived in the United States in 2000 on an F-1 student visa and later secured permanent residency through the Diversity Visa program in 2017.
Investigators later confirmed that the individual had immigrated to the United States through the Diversity Visa program, intensifying scrutiny of the system.
USCIS officials indicated that guidance for affected individuals would be issued in the coming days.
They have also confirmed that the pause could create uncertainty for thousands of applicants who were preparing to submit documentation or attend interviews.
As investigations into the campus shootings continue, federal authorities have not indicated whether additional immigration programs will face review, or whether additional security reviews will be implemented for current visa holders or applicants already in the waiting list.
Trump’s Fight Against Immigrant Crime
U.S government data shows that immigrants account for a smaller share of violent crime than native-born Americans.
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According to the U.S Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 93 and 95 percent of inmates in state prisons are U.S-born, while 5 to 7 percent are foreign-born.
State prisons hold the vast majority of offenders convicted of violent crimes such as murder, rape, and assault.
The Texas Department of Public Safety covering 2012 to 2018 found that U.S-born citizens were more than twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes compared to undocumented immigrants, and nearly four times more likely than legal immigrants.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation does not record immigration status in its national crime reports, meaning there is no nationwide breakdown by visa type.
As a result, Diversity Visa holders are not tracked as a separate category, and isolated cases cannot be treated as representative of broader crime trends.
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