US Immigration Lottery Suspended After Shooting Incident at Brown University
US Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, announced the suspension of the Diversity Visa Program following the revelation that the suspect in the shooting at Brown University had obtained a visa through this program.
In a post on platform X Thursday evening, Noem stated that she had instructed the US Citizenship and Immigration Services to temporarily halt the program “to ensure that no more Americans are harmed as a result of this disastrous program.”
The shooting incident occurred on December 13 in the physics building at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, resulting in the death of a graduate student and injuring nine others. The police later identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, from Portugal.
Noem explained that Valente entered the United States in 2017 through the DV1 program and received a Green Card. She added that former President Donald Trump attempted to terminate the program in 2017 after a truck attack in New York by a terrorist who also entered through the DV1 program, which resulted in eight fatalities.
The Diversity Visa Program allocates up to 50,000 visas annually for immigrants from countries with low immigration rates to the United States, distributed via a lottery system according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
