What is US diversity visa lottery, paused by Donald Trump after Brown University shooting?

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Friday announced she has ordered an immediate pause of the federal diversity visa lottery program after investigators said a man suspected of killing two students at Brown University and an MIT professor entered the United States through the program.

In a post on X, Noem said the suspected gunman, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, entered the US in 2017 through the diversity immigrant visa program and later obtained permanent resident status.

“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem wrote.

The US official said she was acting at President Donald Trump’s direction to halt the program to prevent further harm.

Neves Valente, 48, is suspected of fatally shooting two students and wounding nine others in a lecture hall at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, last Saturday.

Authorities believe he then killed MIT professor Nuno F. G. Loureiro two days later at the professor’s home in Brookline, Massachusetts, nearly 80 kilometers away.

Neves Valente was found deadon Thursday evening from what authorities said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez said investigators believe Neves Valente acted alone.

According to an affidavit from a Providence police detective, Neves Valente first came to the United States on a student visa to attend Brown University in 2000.

He took a leave of absence in 2001, and authorities said it remains unclear where he lived in the years before receiving a diversity immigrant visa in 2017 and later a green card.

What is US diversity visa lottery?

The diversity visa lottery, created by Congress, makes up to 50,000 immigrant visas available each year to people from countries that have historically low rates of immigration to the United States. Many recipients come from African nations even as applicants are drawn from regions around the world.

Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 diversity visa lottery, with about 131,000 selected when including spouses and dependents, according to government data. Portuguese citizens received just 38 of those selections.

Winners of the lottery are invited to apply for permanent residence and must pass background checks, interviews at US consulates and the same vetting required of other green card applicants.

Trump has long criticised the diversity visa program, arguing it poses security risks. During his first term, he sought to eliminate it following a 2017 truck-ramming attack in New York City that killed eight people and was carried out by a man who had entered the U.S. through the lottery.

Noem’s directive to pause the program is almost certain to face legal challenges, as the lottery is mandated by federal law and changes typically require congressional action.