President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered a pause on the United States green card diversity lottery immigrant visa program, which authorities say allowed the man who killed two Brown University students and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor to enter the country.
Police identified the shooter as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national and former Brown University student who immigrated to the United States in 2017. Authorities found Valente dead in a New Hampshire storage unit on Thursday night, from what investigators believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“The Brown University shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card. This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X. “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.”
Trump called on Congress to eliminate the visa lottery after that attack, but the effort failed.
“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” Noem added.
The “diversity visa” program allows up to 55,000 immigrants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States into the country every year, according to the State Department.
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Valente, a lawful permanent resident, attended Brown University as a physics student in 2001 and re-entered the United States 16 years later under the diversity visa program as a green card holder. Authorities believe he acted alone and have not revealed a motive. Investigators say Valente remained at large for six days after the Brown shootings, during which he allegedly entered an engineering building and opened fire, leaving two people dead and injuring nine more. While on the run, authorities believe he fatally shot MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro at his home.
Police traced Valente to the New Hampshire storage facility after receiving a tip based on a Reddit post from someone who said they had seen the vehicle used by the gunman. “I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” the post said, according to a police affidavit.
That person later came forward to the police and provided a description of Valente. He said that he asked Valente why he was circling the block near the university, to which he replied, “I don’t know you from nobody,” and “Why are you harassing me?”
Brown University officials and police have faced scrutiny over their handling of the investigation, including questions about why more surveillance footage was not available from the campus building where the shooting occurred.
“I know this has been hard on all of us over the past five days,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said at a Thursday night press conference. “Minutes have felt like hours, but the people of Providence have done what we’re best at – we’ve leaned on one another, come together and supported one another, and showed the nation what a tight-knit community looks like.”
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