Trump pulls the plug: Green Card lottery suspended after campus shooter entered US

President Donald Trump has indefinitely suspended the United States' Diversity Visa Lottery, a program granting 50,000 permanent residency "Green Cards" annually, in the wake of two deadly campus shootings. The order, citing the attacks allegedly committed by a single suspect who entered the U.S. through the program, marks a swift and dramatic shift in immigration policy.

A policy response to tragedy

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the suspension on Thursday via social media, stating that President Trump had directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to halt the program. "This monster should never have been allowed into our country," Noem wrote, linking the policy directly to the perpetrator of the recent violence. The Diversity Visa Lottery, established by Congress in 1990, aims to diversify the immigrant population by randomly selecting applicants from countries with historically low U.S. immigration rates, predominantly in Africa and Europe.

Details of the shootings and the suspect

The suspension follows two separate attacks. On December 13, a shooting at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, left two people dead and nine injured. Two days later, on December 15, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) physics professor Nuno Loureiro was killed in a targeted attack at his home in Brookline. Police later confirmed that 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente, who was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot in a New Hampshire storage unit, was the prime suspect in both killings. Authorities revealed that Valente and Professor Loureiro had attended the same academic program at a Portuguese university in 1995.

Scrutiny of the visa program and its future

The suspect, a Portuguese citizen, was one of only 38 individuals from Portugal selected for a Green Card in the 2025 lottery, which saw over 20 million global applicants. While winners must pass rigorous security screenings, this incident has placed the entire program under intense political scrutiny. The indefinite suspension halts a major legal immigration pathway and will affect tens of thousands of potential immigrants worldwide. The move is in line with the Trump administration's broader "America First" stance, which prioritizes stringent immigration controls—a policy area closely followed by international partners like Türkiye, which emphasizes orderly and lawful migration processes.