Federalbrief
Dec 21, 2025

Noem Halts Visa Lottery After Brown University Shooting Suspect Identified yyy

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced late Thursday that the Trump administration will suspend the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, known as the “visa lottery,” after officials confirmed that the suspect in the Brown University mass shooting and the killing of an MIT professor entered the United States through that system.

“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem wrote on X. “At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”

Noem identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national who received a green card through the diversity visa lottery in 2017.

Federal authorities say Valente killed two students and wounded nine others at Brown University on Dec. 13 before allegedly shooting and killing MIT professor Nuno Loureiro two days later in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Valente was found dead by suicide Thursday night in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire, ending a multi-state manhunt. “This tragedy underscores the national security risks of random immigration lotteries,” Noem said.

The Diversity Visa Program, created by Congress in 1990, issues up to 50,000 immigrant visas each year through a random lottery to individuals from countries with low immigration rates to the U.S. Applicants must have a high school education or qualifying work experience and undergo background checks before receiving green cards.

President Trump has long criticized the program, calling it a “national security disaster” that allows people to enter the country “without regard for merit.”

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