The Brown University shooting exposed a deadly flaw in America's immigration system.
Democrats created a lottery that brought terrorists to our shores.
And Kristi Noem just slammed the door on one immigration program that let killers in.
Trump Administration Shuts Down Visa Lottery After Mass Shooting
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced Thursday that President Trump ordered an immediate pause of the Diversity Visa Lottery program after discovering the Brown University and MIT shooter entered America through it.
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, won the visa lottery in 2017 and got his green card.
Eight years later, he murdered two Brown University students, wounded nine others, and killed an MIT professor before taking his own life in a New Hampshire storage unit.
"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," Noem posted on X. "This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country."¹
The program hands out 50,000 green cards every year through random selection to people from countries with low immigration rates to America.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses and dependents.²
Noem acted immediately on Trump's directive.
"At President Trump's direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program," Noem stated.³
This Isn't The First Time The Visa Lottery Brought A Killer To America
Trump fought to end this program during his first term after another diversity visa winner murdered eight Americans.
Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek national, entered the United States through the lottery in 2010.
On Halloween 2017, Saipov drove a rented Home Depot truck down a Manhattan bike path, deliberately mowing down pedestrians.
He killed eight people – including five Argentine tourists and two Americans – and injured 12 others.
When police shot and stopped him, Saipov exited the truck shouting "Allahu Akbar" while brandishing pellet guns and paint ball guns.
Investigators found a note in the truck declaring "ISIS Lives Forever."⁴
During FBI questioning at the hospital, Saipov showed zero remorse and told agents he "felt good about what he did."
He told agents he planned the attack for a year and chose Halloween specifically because he believed more civilians would be on the streets.⁶
"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," Noem wrote.⁷
Trump called the lottery "a Chuck Schumer beauty" and demanded Congress eliminate it immediately.
But Democrats and RINOs blocked every attempt to shut down the program.
Now Americans have died again because Washington refused to listen.
The lottery was created by Congress in 1990, supposedly to "diversify" America's immigrant population.
But that's a lie.
The program was originally designed to help Irish and Italian immigrants in the 1980s who couldn't qualify under normal immigration rules.⁸
Politicians wrapped it in diversity language to hide that they were creating special privileges for Europeans.
By the mid-1990s, European interest dropped off as their economies improved.
Now the majority of lottery visas go to African countries, with minimal vetting beyond basic background checks.
The Inspector General identified massive fraud in multiple countries, including Bangladesh where one agent reportedly enrolled an entire phone book to either extort money from winners or sell their slots.⁹
Trump tried eliminating this disaster in 2017, pushing a merit-based immigration system that would prioritize highly skilled, English-speaking immigrants instead of random lottery winners.
Senate Democrats killed it.
The program survived Trump's first term and even got suspended briefly in 2020 during the pandemic before Biden restarted it in 2021.
Now, after two mass casualty events committed by lottery winners, Trump is using executive authority to pause it immediately.
Legal experts predict immigration advocates will sue, arguing Trump can't suspend a program created by Congress.
But Trump isn't backing down.
After an Afghan national killed National Guard members in November, Trump's administration imposed sweeping restrictions on immigration from Afghanistan and 18 other countries of concern.¹⁰
The diversity lottery represents everything wrong with America's immigration system – random selection instead of merit, minimal vetting instead of thorough screening, and political correctness instead of common sense.
Trump promised to make America safe again.
Shutting down this program is exactly how he delivers on that promise.
¹ Alex Nitzberg, "Noem announces pause on immigrant visa lottery that allowed alleged Brown shooter to enter US," Fox News, December 19, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Tracy Connor and Jonathan Dienst, "Note about ISIS found in truck used in NYC terrorist attack," NBC News, November 1, 2017.
⁵ "New York Terrorist Attack: Suspect Hit With Federal Charges," NBC News, November 2, 2017.
⁶ Kristi Noem, Post on X, December 19, 2025.
⁷ Anna Law, quoted in "The 'Diversity' Green Card Lottery Was Originally for White Immigrants," History.com, May 27, 2025.
⁸ Stephen A. Edson, testimony before House Judiciary Committee, "Diversity Visa Program and Its Susceptibility to Fraud and Abuse," Congress.gov.
⁹ "Why the US is targeting the diversity visa lottery," CNN, December 19, 2025.
