US Suspends Green Card Lottery After Deadly Campus Shooting

The Trump administration has suspended the United States’ green card lottery programme, citing national security concerns after a beneficiary of the scheme was linked to a deadly campus shooting.

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, entered the United States in 2017 through the Diversity Visa scheme and later obtained permanent residency.

Valente is accused of killing two people during a shooting at Brown University on December 13 and was also linked to the killing of an MIT professor days later. Police said he was found dead after a manhunt.

“At President Trump’s direction, USCIS is pausing the Diversity Visa programme,” Noem said, citing national security concerns.

The Diversity Visa lottery issues up to 55,000 green cards annually to applicants from countries with low US immigration rates.