December 19, (THEWILL) — President Donald Trump has ordered the suspension of the United States Diversity Visa (DV) Lottery Programme, popularly known as the green card lottery, citing national security concerns.
The directive was announced on Friday by the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem.
Speaking with newsmen in Washington, Noem said the decision followed recent shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), noting that the suspect involved had entered the United States through immigration channels linked to the Diversity Visa system.
According to her, the programme, which grants up to 50,000 permanent resident visas annually through a random lottery, poses security risks that must be urgently addressed.
“The Diversity Visa programme has been exploited in ways that endanger American lives”, Noem said, stressing that the administration would no longer tolerate vulnerabilities within the immigration system.
In 2025 alone, nearly 20 million people applied for the DV Lottery, with more than 131,000 applicants selected to proceed to the screening and vetting stage before eventual entry into the United States.
President Trump, who has consistently criticised the programme since his first term in office, described the suspension as a necessary step to protect the country from potential threats.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country”, Noem wrote on X.
Providence, Rhode Island Police Chief, Oscar Perez, confirmed that the shooting suspect, identified as Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, first entered the United States on a student visa in 2000 and later obtained permanent residency in 2017. Valente was found dead on Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The suspension of the DV Lottery marks the latest move by the Trump administration to tighten immigration controls, with officials repeatedly pointing to security incidents as justification for stricter entry and residency policies.
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