UNITED STATES PAUSES DV1 VISA PROGRAM AFTER BROWN UNIVERSITY SHOOTING DETAILS EMERGE
UNITED STATES PAUSES DV1 VISA PROGRAM AFTER BROWN UNIVERSITY SHOOTING DETAILS EMERGE
The United States government has temporarily paused the DV1 Diversity Visa program following shocking revelations connected to the Brown University shooting suspect.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced late Thursday that, on the direction of President Donald Trump, the DV1 visa lottery system would be halted immediately. The move follows reports that the suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, entered the country through the program.
According to authorities, Valente obtained permanent residency in the United States in 2017 under the DV1 system. He has been linked to the Brown University shooting and is also believed to be responsible for the killing of an MIT physics professor.
Secretary Noem stated that the decision is aimed at preventing similar incidents, describing the visa lottery as a “disastrous program.”
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she wrote on X. She recalled that President Trump attempted to end the program in 2017 after an ISIS-linked attacker entered the country using the same visa category and carried out a deadly truck attack in New York.
Authorities later confirmed Valente was found dead inside a storage facility on Thursday night.
The DV1 Diversity Visa program annually offers up to 55,000 visas to immigrants from nations with historically low migration levels to the U.S. State Department data shows that the 2026 visa lottery attracted over 20 million applicants from more than 170 countries.
More updates are expected as federal agencies continue reviewing immigration-linked security policies.