The United States has moved to pause the green card lottery program that enabled the suspect in the Brown University shooting to enter the country, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Dec. 18.

The program’s suspension follows the Dec. 13 shooting at Brown University that left two students dead and nine injured. Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national and former Brown student, was identified as the suspect in both that attack and the Dec. 15 fatal shooting of MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro at his home near Boston. The motive for the attacks remains unclear.

In a statement on X, Noem said the suspect, identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, entered the United States in 2017 through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program and was issued a green card.

Noem said that she has instructed the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to pause the program at President Donald Trump’s direction for safety purposes.

“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said. “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.”

The diversity visa program offers up to 50,000 immigrant visas per year to applicants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States, with recipients picked through a random selection process.

To qualify for the program, applicants must have at least completed high school or have two years of work experience in certain jobs. Noem said that Trump had sought to end the program during his first term.

“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,” she said.

Valente, whose last known address was in Miami, Florida, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility on Dec. 18. Police said the suspect died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Photos of Brown University shooting victims Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov (L) and Ella Cook (R) amongst flowers at a makeshift memorial at the school's Van Wickle Gate in Providence, R.I., on Dec. 17, 2025. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo)

Brown University President Christina Paxson said that Valente had been enrolled at the school several decades ago for a short time, attending from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001.

The USCIS last month halted all asylum decisions following the Nov. 26 shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, which authorities say was carried out by an Afghan national who entered the United States in September 2021 through a Biden-era resettlement program.

Trump had also urged the government to suspend federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens, denaturalize immigrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any foreigners deemed to be “a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western civilization” following that attack.

Joseph Lord contributed to this report.