U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she was suspending the diversity visa program, saying the man suspected of killing two students at Brown University had been granted one.
Noem posted to X late Thursday that she had instructed the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the (DV1) program “to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
On Dec. 13, two students died and nine others were injured when someone opened fire at the physics building at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Police later identified Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, as the suspect.
Valente was a former student at the university and had been enrolled in a Ph.D program in physics in 2000, the university’s president, Christina H. Paxson, said. Valente is also suspected of having killed MIT physics professor Nuno Loureiro in his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, two days after the Brown shooting.
Valente was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility on Thursday, Providence Chief of Police Oscar Perez said.
