Trump suspends green card lottery

US President Donald Trump has decided to temporarily suspend the Diversity Visa (DV) or Green Card Lottery program following the horrific shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.

The decision was implemented on Thursday (December 18). Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem said in a post on social media that President Trump has directed the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to suspend the Green Card Lottery program.

The suspect found dead on Thursday was a Portuguese citizen. He entered the United States in 2017 through the ‘Diversity Visa’ or Green Card Lottery program (DB-1) and later received a green card.

Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam said Trump had ordered the suspension of the visa program “so that no more Americans are harmed by this horrific program.”

US officials say they believe 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente also killed MIT Portuguese professor Nuno Loureiro earlier this week.

The program grants a maximum of 50,000 visas each year. The visas are awarded through a lottery among citizens of countries with low immigration rates to the United States.

In a social media post, Christy Noam said Trump had previously “fought” to end the program after a 2017 truck attack in New York City that killed eight people.

Noam said Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek national and Islamic State supporter who was sentenced to multiple life sentences for the attack, also entered the United States through the DB-1 program.

Noam's comments came as Neves Valente's body was found in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire, where police believe he committed suicide by shooting himself.

Police said video footage and information from the public led investigators to a rental car location where they obtained the suspect's name and matched him to their lead suspect, culminating a six-day, multi-state manhunt.

A bag and two firearms were found on him. Evidence found in a nearby vehicle matched the shooting at Brown University, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Nerhanha said.

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente attended the university in 2000 and was pursuing a PhD in physics.

She said she currently has "no active relationship" with Brown.

Officials said they believe Neves Valente shot and killed MIT professor Nuno F. Gomez Loureiro, 47, at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, on Monday. Brookline is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Providence.

Police said the two men attended the same university in Portugal in the late 1990s.

Officials said the two cases were linked after a witness at Brown University identified the suspect's car through CCTV footage.

The same car was also seen near the scene of the professor's murder just two days after the Brown University shooting.

Authorities have not yet released a possible motive for the two attacks.

Two students were killed and nine others were wounded when a gunman opened fire in an engineering building at Brown University during final exams on Dec. 13.

The victims were identified as Ella Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore from Alabama, and Mukhammed Aziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old Uzbek-American who had just started college.

Source: BBC