US Government Suspends Diversity Visa Lottery After Campus Shootings

By Betegbar Yaregal– December 19, 2025

US President Donald Trump has indefinitely suspended the Diversity Visa Lottery program, a key immigration pathway used by about 50,000 people annually. The move came after the suspect in two university killings was found to have entered the United States through the program.

According to a report by the *Daily Mail*, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the suspension in a social media post, stating, “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.” She linked the decision directly to the perpetrator of the recent violence, a Portuguese national named Claudio Neves Valente.

The suspension follows two separate attacks. On December 13, a shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island left two students dead and nine injured. Two days later, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) physics professor Nuno Loureiro was killed at his home in Brookline. Police identified Neves Valente as the prime suspect in both cases. Authorities confirmed that the suspect, who was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in New Hampshire on December 19, had won a Green Card in the 2025 Diversity Visa Lottery.

The program, established by the US Congress in 1990, randomly selects applicants from countries with historically low US immigration rates. The *Daily Mail* For the 2025 lottery, which saw nearly 20 million global applicants, only 38 slots were allocated to Portuguese citizens. The move aligns with the Trump administration’s broader stance on stringent immigration controls and is expected to face legal challenges.

According to U.S. government data , hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians apply for the program annually, with over 1 million total entries from Ethiopia recorded in recent years. The program has been a pathway for the Ethiopian diaspora, which numbers an estimated 350,000 to over 460,000 people in the U.S.

This suspension follows another recent U.S. immigration decision affecting Ethiopians. On December 14, the Department of Homeland Security terminated Ethiopia’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS), declaring conditions in the country “no longer pose a serious threat.” The dual moves significantly narrow legal immigration avenues from Ethiopia to the United States.