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President Donald Trump has suspended the U.S. green card lottery program following last week’s mass shooting at Brown University that left two people dead.
The suspect, a Portuguese man who was found dead on Thursday, entered the country in 2017 through the Diversity Lottery Immigrant Visa Program (DV1) and received a green card.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she had suspended the visa program at Trump’s direction to “ensure that no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
U.S. officials said they believe the suspect, 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente, also killed Portuguese MIT professor Nuno Loureiro earlier this week.
The program provides up to 50,000 visas each year through random selection from countries with low immigration rates to the United States.
Noem wrote on social media that Trump had previously “worked to end” the program in 2017, when a truck crash in New York City killed eight people.
Uzbekistan national Sayfullo Saipov, An ISIS supporter was sentenced to multiple life sentences for the attacksaccording to Noem, enters the United States through the DV1 program.
Her comments came just hours after Neves Valente was found dead at a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, with what police believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
After a six-day, multi-state manhunt, investigators based on video evidence and tips from the public located a car rental location, found the suspect’s name and matched him to a person of interest, police said.
He was found dead with a book bag and two guns. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said evidence in a nearby car was consistent with the scene of the Brown University shooting in Providence.
Brown University President Christina Paxson said that Neves Valente studied at the Ivy League school from the fall of 2000 to the following spring, pursuing a doctorate in physics.
She said he currently has “no positive contact” with Brown.
Officials said they believe Neves Valente shot Nuno F. Gomez-Loreiro, 47, a MIT professor, on Monday at his home in Brookline, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Providence.
Police said the two studied at the same university in Portugal in the late 1990s.
Officials said the two cases were linked when the suspect’s vehicle was identified through CCTV footage and a witness at Brown University.
Two days later, the same car was found near the scene where the professor was shot.
Authorities have not provided any suspected motive for either attack.
On December 13, a gunman burst into a Brown University engineering building and opened fire during a final exam, killing two students and injuring nine others.
They were identified as Ella Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore from Alabama, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old Uzbek American who had just started college.
