by Nigerian News24 Correspondents
The Trump administration has ordered the suspension of the U.S. diversity visa, or green card lottery, following revelations that a man linked to deadly shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) entered the country through the program.
U.S. authorities identified the suspect as Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national. Investigators said Valente opened fire inside a building at Brown University over the weekend, killing two students and injuring nine others. Two days later, he allegedly shot and killed an MIT professor, Nuno Loureiro, with whom he had previously studied.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Thursday that Valente entered the United States in 2017 through the diversity visa program and was later granted permanent residency. Describing him as a “heinous individual,” Noem said he should never have been allowed into the country.
“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately instructing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” Noem said in a social media post.
The diversity visa lottery provides up to 55,000 green cards annually to applicants from countries with low immigration rates to the United States. During his first term in 2017, President Trump had already pledged to abolish the program following a deadly terrorist attack in New York, a position Noem reiterated while citing the latest incident.
U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said Valente studied at Brown University on an F-1 student visa between 2000 and 2021 before obtaining legal permanent resident status. She also disclosed that Valente and the MIT professor had attended the same academic program in Portugal between 1995 and 2000.
Authorities said there is no immediate indication of a motive for the attacks, which shook elite campuses across New England. Valente was found dead by suicide at a storage facility in New Hampshire after a days-long manhunt. Two firearms were recovered at the scene, and police believe he acted alone.
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said investigators traced Valente through financial records and surveillance footage from both crime scenes. Prosecutors added that he took steps to evade detection, including switching license plates on a rental vehicle and using a hard-to-track phone.
Portugal’s Foreign Minister, Paulo Rangel, confirmed that the suspect was a Portuguese citizen and said Portuguese authorities were cooperating with U.S. investigators.
The two students killed at Brown were identified as Ella Cook, vice president of the university’s Republican Party association, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, a student originally from Uzbekistan. University President Christina Paxson said six of the injured students remained hospitalized in stable condition, while three had been discharged.
The shootings add to a growing list of mass gun violence incidents in the United States this year, as renewed efforts to restrict access to firearms continue to face political gridlock.