President Trump ordered the suspension of a green card lottery program that enabled the suspect in the Brown University mass shooting and killing of an MIT professor to live in the U.S, a top official announced late Thursday.
The big picture: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's announcement marks the latest Trump administration effort to limit legal immigration amid a wider crackdown that's triggered a wave of lawsuits.
Driving the news: Officials at a Thursday night briefing announcing the suspect in the shootings had been found dead said the Portuguese national had studied at Brown in the 2000s and went on to gain a green card via the Diversity Immigrant Visa lottery program (DV1) in 2017.
- Noem said on X that Trump had told her to "immediately" direct U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to pause the "disastrous" program "to ensure no more Americans are harmed" by it.
- "This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country," she said of the suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente.
State of play: The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program awards up to 55,000 immigrant visas each year for people from countries with low immigration rates, per a U.S. government web page.
- It's likely the suspension of the program that Congress established will face legal challenges from immigration advocacy groups.
- Trump called on lawmakers to end the DV1 program during his first term.
Go deeper: Trump brings legal immigration to a screeching halt
Editor's note: This article has been updated with additional details throughout.
