US President Donald Trump has ordered the suspension of the "green card" lottery program, which allowed a suspect in a mass shooting at Brown University and the murder of an MIT professor to reside in the US, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced late Thursday, writes UNN with reference to Axios.
Details
The statement by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem marks another attempt by the Trump administration to restrict legal immigration amid a broader crackdown that has sparked a wave of lawsuits, the publication writes.
At a briefing Thursday evening, where it was announced that the shooting suspect had been found dead, officials said the Portuguese national attended Brown University in the 2000s and obtained a "green card" through the Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV1) lottery program in 2017.
Noem indicated on X that Trump told her to "immediately" instruct the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to suspend the "catastrophic" program "to ensure that no more Americans are harmed" by it.
"This heinous individual should never have been allowed into our country," she said of the suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente.
Addition
The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program issues up to 55,000 immigrant visas annually to people from countries with low immigration rates, according to a US government webpage.
It is likely that the suspension of the program, created by the US Congress, will face legal challenges from immigration rights groups, the publication notes.
Trump called on lawmakers to end the DV1 program during his first term.