The Trump administration has announced plans to suspend the diversity visa, or “green card lottery,” programme after investigators said a beneficiary of the scheme carried out deadly shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Authorities identified the suspect as Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, whom police say opened fire inside a Brown University building over the weekend, killing two students and wounding nine others. Two days later, he fatally shot an MIT professor with whom he had previously studied, investigators said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Thursday that Neves Valente entered the United States through the diversity visa programme in 2017 and later obtained permanent resident status.
The diversity visa programme grants up to 55,000 green cards each year to applicants from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States.
Describing Neves Valente as a “heinous individual,” Noem said he “should never have been allowed in our country.”
“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately instructing USCIS to pause the DV-1 programme to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous policy,” she wrote on social media.
During his first term, President Donald Trump repeatedly called for the abolition of the green card lottery, particularly after a deadly terrorist attack in New York in 2017. Noem referenced that episode in her remarks.
US Attorney Leah Foley said at a briefing on Thursday that Neves Valente studied at Brown University on an F-1 student visa between 2000 and 2001 and later obtained lawful permanent residency. She added that he had attended the same academic programme in Portugal between 1995 and 2000 as MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, who was killed at his home in Brookline, near Boston.
Authorities have not identified a motive for the attacks, which have shaken the elite New England campuses.
After a days-long manhunt, Neves Valente was found dead at a storage facility in New Hampshire alongside two firearms. Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said the suspect died by suicide and is believed to have acted alone.
Portugal’s Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel said it was “with great dismay” that authorities learned the suspect was a Portuguese citizen, adding that Portuguese police were cooperating with U.S. investigators.
The two students killed at Brown were identified as Ella Cook, vice president of the university’s Republican Party association, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, originally from Uzbekistan.
Brown University President Christina Paxson said six of the wounded remained hospitalised in stable condition, while three others had been discharged.
Officials said the investigation gained momentum after authorities traced financial records and analysed surveillance footage from both crime scenes.
Providence Police Chief Perez said early investigative work helped establish links between the attacks, while Foley said the suspect had been “sophisticated in hiding his tracks,” including switching licence plates on a rental vehicle and using a mobile phone that proved difficult to trace.
The United States has recorded more than 300 mass shooting incidents so far this year, according to tracking data, while efforts to tighten gun control laws remain politically divisive.
AFP
