Donald Trump has taken action to halt a green card lottery program following a tragic event involving a gunman who killed two students at Brown University.
The suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old from Portugal, also killed a professor at MIT. He had entered the U.S. through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program, known as DV1.
On Thursday night, Homeland Security Secretary Noem expressed on social media that “this heinous individual should never have been allowed in this country.”
She continued, “Under President Trump’s directive, I am instructing USCIS to suspend the DV1 program immediately to prevent further harm to Americans from this flawed program.”
Noem also mentioned that Trump attempted to abolish the program in 2017 after a terrorist attack in New York City, where a truck driven by an extremist killed eight people.
In the same year, Neves Valente was granted legal permanent residency, according to Leah B. Foley, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the United States, many of them in Africa.
The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Donald Trump has ordered a suspension to a green card lottery program used by the gunman who killed two students at Brown University
Claudio Neves Valente (pictured) – the 48-year-old Portuguese national who also murdered a professor at MIT – entered the country through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program known as DV1
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners.
After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Neves Valente opened fire during a study session at the Ivy League’s School of Engineering Barus and Holley Building on December 13.
Two days later, he fatally shot MIT Professor Nuno Loureiro inside his Boston home.
It remains unclear why Neves Valente opened fire at the Rhode Island school, killing Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, of Virginia, and Ella Cook, of Alabama, 19.
Authorities revealed that gunman original target was Loureiro and the pair had attended the same school in Portugal from 1995 to 2000.
It was unclear what the shooter’s motive was or what his relationship with Loureiro had been.
In a post to social media Thursday night, Homeland Security Secretary Noem said that Neves Valente ‘should never have been allowed in this country’
The suspect was ultimately found dead after a six-day manhunt, when authorities located a vehicle he used parked outside of a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire – more than 80 miles from the Ivy League school.
Officers were then able to secure a search warrant for a unit believed to have been rented by the suspect, and found Neves Valente dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in an unoccupied unit.
Neves Valente had two firearms on him at the time of his death, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha revealed.
Authorities had earlier said they had identified the shadowy figure caught on surveillance footage near the scene of Saturday’s shooting, whose face they had been attempting to find with the help of grainy surveillance footage.
He had also been caught on surveillance footage near the professor’s apartment, and was seen on camera entering the storage center in New Hampshire wearing the same clothes that he was pictured in in Rhode Island, according to Foley.
She said Thursday night that Neves Valente rented a hotel from November 26 through November 30, and then rented a vehicle on December 1 – which had been seen around Brown University through the day of the shooting on December 13.
Police were ultimately able to track him down after a homeless witness came forward.
An affidavit from Rhode Island detailed how a custodian at the school noticed a suspicious person wearing a surgical mask who walked with a limp and stopped in the bathroom of the Barus and Holley Building on December 13.
Authorities identified the suspected Brown gunman as Claudio Neves-Valente, 48, at a news conference on Thursday
Armed police officers gathered outside of a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire on Thursday, where a vehicle that was rented to Neves Valente was found abandoned
Then, on December 16, Providence police received a tip from an anonymous source referencing a Reddit post.
The big break in the case then came when authorities investigating the Brown shooting saw a call-out from Massachusetts police probing Loureiro’s murder – and realized a vehicle of interest in that case was just like the one they were looking for.
It was the same make and model, but the license plates were different, law enforcement officials told CNN.
A witness then provided a license plate to authorities probing the Brown shooting, who then investigated the vehicle and its past drivers – which police say ultimately led them to confirm the two vehicles were the same.
Police now say the unidentified suspect employed a series of countermeasures to avoid being tracked beyond swapping the license plates, as he apparently planned to avoid surveillance cameras and facial recognition technology by making himself unidentifiable.
He even used a cellphone that obfuscated his location and credit cards that were not in his name, Foley said.
But officers in Massachusetts were able to determine that the Google email he had used to check into a hotel in Boston logged in from an IP address half a mile away from Loureiro’s home on December 14.
The following night, a surveillance camera also captured a blue or gray Nissan Sentra about a mile from the physics professor’s home and footage showed him entering a nearby apartment building.
About an hour later, Neves Valente was seen entering the storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire, dressed in the same clothes that he was seen wearing right after Loureiro’s murder, Foley said.
He would later be found dead inside the storage facility.
