Overview
- Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said late Thursday that, at the president’s direction, she ordered USCIS to immediately pause the diversity visa program.
- The suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, obtained lawful permanent residence in 2017 through the lottery and was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
- Authorities say Valente is suspected of killing two Brown University students and an MIT professor and of wounding nine others in the campus attack.
- The diversity visa program, created by Congress, offers up to 50,000 green cards annually to people from underrepresented countries, with winners required to pass consular interviews and standard vetting.
- Trump has long opposed the lottery, and legal experts and news reports say the unilateral suspension is likely to draw lawsuits and disrupt processing for tens of thousands of selectees.