President Donald Trump has ordered the suspension of the Green Card lottery program after it was revealed that the suspect in the shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island had entered the United States through this program. This was announced by US Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, on social media.
"At the direction of President Donald Trump, I am ordering the suspension of the DV1 program to prevent further harm to Americans from this program," Nielsen said.
According to Nielsen, the shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old citizen of Portugal, entered the US through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (DV1) in 2017, at which time he also received a Green Card. "This despicable individual should never have been allowed to enter our country," Nielsen added.
The shooting at Brown University in Providence occurred on December 13 near the Barus & Holley building, where graduation exams were taking place that day. Two people were killed, and about 20 others were injured. Among the victims was Muhammadaziz Umrzakov, a student from Uzbekistan.
On December 18, the body of the suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, was found in a warehouse. It was later revealed that he had been a physics student at Brown University in 2000.
The decision to suspend the Green Card program follows actions taken by Trump during his previous presidency after a terrorist attack in New York committed by an immigrant from Uzbekistan, who had also entered the US through the Green Card lottery. The attacker, Sayfullo Saipov, carried out an attack in Manhattan on October 31, 2017, killing eight people.
The Diversity Visa Program, launched in 1990, annually awards 50,000 Green Cards to residents of countries with low levels of immigration to the United States. Citizens of all countries are eligible to participate, except for those from nations that have had more than 50,000 immigrants to the US in the past five years.
