Trump suspends US green card lottery over university killings

United States President Donald Trump has suspended the U.S. green card lottery, citing killings in the country.

The Trump administration said the green card lottery allowed a suspect behind both a mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor into the United States.

Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, is accused of bursting into a building at the Ivy League school on Saturday and opening fire on students, killing two and wounding nine.

He is also accused of killing a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) two days later.

Homeland security chief Kristi Noem wrote on social media on Thursday that Neves Valente “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card.”

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According to the State Department, the U.S. green card lottery grants up to 55,000 permanent resident visas annually to people “from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.”

Noem described Neves Valente, who police said on Thursday was found dead by suicide after a days-long manhunt, was a “heinous individual” who “should never have been allowed in our country.”

“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” Noem said.

There have been more than 300 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot.

The Star