Noem Pauses Diversity Visa Program After Brown Shooting

Newsmax ^ | December 18, 2025 | Charlie McCarthy

[Navy Patriot]

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem late Thursday night paused the Diversity Visa Program, saying it allowed the Brown University shooting suspect to enter the U.S. and receive a green card.

In an X post, Noem said the suspected 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," adding, "This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country."

Noem said she was acting at President Donald Trump's direction and ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to halt processing tied to the program "to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program."

CBS News reported Noem's announcement came as authorities concluded a days-long investigation into the Brown University attack, which left two students dead and nine people wounded, as well as the subsequent killing of an MIT professor in suburban Boston.

Officials said Valente, 48, a Portuguese national who previously lived in Miami, was later found dead by suicide in a New Hampshire storage unit.

The diversity visa lottery, created by Congress in the 1990s, offers up to 50,000 immigrant visas each year to applicants from countries with relatively low immigration rates to the United States, with recipients selected at random. Tens of millions of people apply annually.

Critics have long argued that handing out green cards through a lottery runs counter to merit-based immigration and can create unnecessary security risks in a world where threats evolve faster than bureaucracy.

Trump has been one of the program's most vocal opponents, pressing to end it during his first term, especially after the 2017 New York City truck-ramming attack carried out by an ISIS-linked terrorist who had entered the U.S. through the diversity visa program.

[Navy Patriot]

Many days (and years) too late, however, finally some action!

[Jane Long]

GOOD!

You’re right ... should’ve been done LONG ago.

Better late, than never.

[Resolute Conservative]

“with recipients selected at random”

Definition of stupidity.

[PGR88]

the DV1 program is an act of law, put into the 1990 Immigration Act by the bloated, leftist walrus Ted Kennedy, and signed by George HW Bush

This same act gave us the H-1B program.

thanks to these two f***ing globalist traitors.

So expect Noem/Trump’s pause to immediately be taken to court, as it is a law passed by Congress.

[hanamizu]

“1990 Immigration Act by the bloated, leftist walrus Ted Kennedy”

---

Yes, the same walrus gave us the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 which de-emphasized migration from Europe and focused on Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and as a parting gift destroyed public education by the No-Child Left Behind Act.
What a guy!

[nwrep]

Passed the Senate on July 13, 1989 (81–17)

Passed the House on October 3, 1990 (unanimous consent in lieu of H.R. 4300, passed 231–192)

Signed into law by President George H. W. Bush on November 29, 1990