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(THE HILL) – President Trump on Thursday suspended the green card lottery program, which was used by the suspected gunman in the Brown University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology shootings to enter the U.S.
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The suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, entered the country in 2017 through the diversity visa (DV) program, which makes up to 55,000 immigrant visas available worldwide through random selection, according to the State Department.
The program prioritizes those from countries with low immigration rates to the U.S. Applicants can then apply for a green card and are subject to the same standards as others seeking permanent residency.
“In 2017, President Trump fought to end this program, following the devastating NYC truck ramming by an ISIS terrorist, who entered under the DV1 program, and murdered eight people,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem wrote in a Thursday post on social platform X.
“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” she added.
It’s unclear whether Trump has the power to suspend the visa lottery, which was established by Congress.
Valente was found dead inside of a New Hampshire storage closet on Thursday, after authorities learned of his whereabouts through an individual who came forward with information about the suspect.
The Saturday shooting at Brown University resulted in two deaths, just days before MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was shot and killed earlier this week. The FBI previously said there was no link between the two cases.
Targeting the immigration pathway used by the shooter is the second such example in recent weeks of the Trump administration broadly restricting immigration in response to an incident.
An Afghan national was arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of a National Guard member last month in Washington, D.C. The Trump administration then placed a hold on all pending asylum applications and paused all pending immigration cases by foreign nationals from the 19 countries deemed “high risk” under Trump’s travel ban.
The president also took actions to limit immigration for Afghanistan specifically, halting the processing of any visas for the country, effectively ending the pathway for those who aided American war efforts there to the U.S.
In August, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said they would evaluate whether an applicant has “good moral character” and take a more “holistic” approach to asylum and citizenship applications.
USCIS said officers must now weigh not just any disqualifying behavior but whether those seeking a pathway to citizenship are in good standing in their community.
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This article was originally published in The Hill.
