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.

Supporters counter that applicants undergo screening and interviews and say the program promotes goodwill abroad and helps the economy.

But Noem's move signals the administration is prioritizing public safety and stricter vetting over a system that effectively outsources immigration decisions to chance.

The pause could also set up a legal fight.

Because the diversity visa program is set in federal law and most lottery visas are overseen by the State Department, CBS noted it is unclear what legal mechanism allows DHS to broadly halt the program, though USCIS handles a smaller slice of cases for applicants already inside the U.S.

Trump previously suspended the program in 2020 as part of wider immigration restrictions tied to the COVID-19 economy, and former President Joe Biden reversed that policy in 2021.

Conservatives argue the back-and-forth underscores why Congress should permanently replace the lottery with a system that emphasizes skills, accountability, and national security rather than leaving Americans to learn after tragedy strikes that a suspect's path into the country began with a random draw.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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