President Donald Trump has ordered an immediate halt to the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program after law enforcement identified a 48-year-old Portuguese national, Claudio Neves Valente, as the perpetrator of a violent crime spree in the Northeast.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have suspended all processing and visa issuances for the program, describing it as a security vulnerability. The administration’s decision rests on the discovery that Valente, while originally entering the U.S. on a student visa in 2000, attained his lawful permanent residency through the diversity lottery in 2017.
The policy shift follows a week of violence that began on December 13, 2025, when Valente opened fire at Brown University’s School of Engineering, killing two students and injuring nine others.
Two days later, he fatally shot Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a prominent physics professor and director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, at his home in Brookline. Investigators believe the attacks were targeted, as Valente and Loureiro were former classmates at the University of Lisbon.
The manhunt ended on December 18 when Valente was found dead by suicide in a New Hampshire storage unit. While the administration frames the suspension as a necessary “Reset” for national safety, legal experts anticipate challenges in court, as the lottery system is a Congressionally mandated program.
