The US halts its diversity visa lottery after the suspect in the Brown University and MIT killings entered the country through the program in 2017.
NEW YORK: The Trump administration will suspend the green card diversity lottery program after the suspect in two campus shootings entered the United States through it.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the immediate pause of the DV1 program on Thursday.
This follows the identification of 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente as the gunman in the attacks.
Investigators said Neves Valente opened fire at Brown University last weekend, killing two students and wounding nine others.
He also killed a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology two days later, according to police.
Noem stated that Neves Valente entered the US through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program in 2017 and was granted a green card.
She described him as a “heinous individual” who “should never have been allowed in our country.”
The program grants up to 55,000 permanent resident visas annually to people from countries with low US immigration rates.
US Attorney Leah Foley said Neves Valente previously studied at Brown University on a student visa from around 2000 to 2021.
Foley added that he had attended the same academic program in Portugal as the slain MIT professor, Nuno Loureiro.
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said Neves Valente’s body was found at a storage unit in New Hampshire.
He died by suicide and is believed to have acted alone, ending a days-long manhunt.
Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel expressed dismay that the chief suspect was a Portuguese citizen.
The two students killed at Brown were Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov.
Six of the wounded remain hospitalised in stable condition, while three have been released.
Officials said the suspect was sophisticated in hiding his tracks during the investigation.
He switched license plates on a rental vehicle and used a phone that was difficult to track.
The case was solved through financial data and video surveillance from both crime scenes. – AFP
