In a decisive escalation of immigration policy reforms under the second Donald Trump administration as of December 19, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security has enacted an immediate and indefinite suspension of the Diversity Visa Program, widely recognized as the Green Card Lottery, invoking heightened national security imperatives in the wake of recent violent incidents attributed to foreign nationals, including the tragic shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that claimed multiple lives and ignited widespread public outcry.

The directive, personally championed by President Trump—a vocal detractor of the lottery system since his first term—emphasizes a shift toward merit-based immigration frameworks over random selection processes, arguing that the existing mechanism inadequately screens applicants and poses undue risks to American citizens, as evidenced by the involvement of lottery beneficiaries in high-profile criminal acts such as the 2017 New York City truck attack by an ISIS-inspired assailant and the more recent university rampages.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem publicly announced the suspension via social media platforms, explicitly linking it to the Brown University shooter Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese immigrant who entered the United States through the Diversity Visa Program in 2017, and who perpetrated the December 13, 2025, attack at Brown that resulted in two student fatalities and nine injuries, followed by the targeted killing of MIT physics professor Nuno FG Loureiro, another Portuguese national, in Brookline on December 15, 2025, before Valente's suicide amid a multi-state manhunt concluding in New Hampshire.

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This policy overhaul builds upon prior restrictive measures implemented by the Trump administration, including stringent curbs on immigration from Afghanistan and select other nations following a November 2025 assault on National Guard personnel by an Afghan perpetrator, collectively forming part of a broader strategy to fortify border controls and vetting procedures against perceived threats from countries with historically low immigration rates to the U.S., particularly those in Africa and other underrepresented regions that traditionally benefit from the program's annual allocation of up to 50,000 visas.

Despite the lottery's rigorous post-selection vetting protocols—which processed over 131,000 individuals including principal winners and their spouses from nearly 20 million applicants for the 2025 cycle—the suspension underscores longstanding criticisms of its lottery-based nature, with minimal direct repercussions for nationals from high-immigration countries like India, which has remained ineligible for participation in recent years, while prompting debates on the program's future viability and potential congressional overrides amid ongoing national security deliberations.

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