Noem says Brown shooting suspect got U.S. visa through diversity lottery, announces pause to program
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Thursday evening that the Trump administration would suspend the diversity visa lottery program, which she said was used eight years ago by the now-deceased man. accused of killing two students from Brown University and a professor from MIT.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed into our country,” Noem said on
Noem said the suspected shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valenteentered the United States under the program in 2017 and obtained a green card.
Launched in the 1990s, the program offers 50,000 visas per year to nationals of countries with relatively low immigration rates to the United States, with recipients selected randomly by drawing lots. Every year, tens of millions of people compete for a visa through this program.
To qualify for a diversity visa, applicants must have at least a high school diploma or two years of work experience in a field requiring training. They must also undergo a screening and interview before obtaining a visa.
The program was created by Congress, and it is unclear under what legal mechanism Noem can order a pause. Most lottery-issued visas are overseen by the State Department, although a small number are processed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services – part of DHS – for applicants already in the United States.
President Trump has long criticized the diversity visa lottery program, arguing that it could pose security risks and is not sufficiently merit-based, like employment-based visas. He pushed to put an end to it at the start of his first term, after a man who had received a diversity visa killed eight people during a truck-ramming attack in New York. Visa supporters say recipients are vetted and argue the program is good for the U.S. economy and the country’s image abroad.
TThe first Trump administration suspended the program in 2020, as part of a broader set of restrictions on legal immigration citing the economic impacts of the COVD-19 pandemic. Former President Joe Biden reversed this policy in 2021.
Neves Valente, 48, was a Portuguese national whose last known residence was in Miami, officials said at a news conference Thursday evening.
More than a decade before he was granted a diversity visa, Neves Valente was admitted to the United States on a student visa in 2000 to pursue his graduate studies at Brown University, according to a local police affidavit attached to his arrest warrant. Brown’s president says he studied at the Ivy League school for a few months starting in the fall of 2000, but took a leave of absence in the spring of 2001 and officially withdrew two years later.
Authorities said Neves Valente was found dead by suicide at a New Hampshire storage unit Thursday evening, ending a days-long investigation following a shooting at Brown that killed two students and injured nine over the weekend. Authorities say he is also responsible for the fatal shooting of an MIT professor in suburban Boston, two days after Brown’s shooting.
