After the Brown University shooting, the US pauses a little-known diversity visa program
When the identity of the suspect in the shootings linked to Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became public, attention quickly shifted from the crime itself to the pathway that brought him to the United States.The suspect, a Portuguese national, entered the US through the diversity immigrant visa program — a congressionally created lottery that offers up to 50,000 green cards each year to applicants from countries that have sent relatively few immigrants to the US in recent years.On Thursday night, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X that she was pausing the program, arguing that the suspect should not have been able to enter the country. The announcement marked the latest move by the Trump administration to restrict legal immigration following acts of violence, often framing such actions as failures of vetting.The decision, however, has reopened a longer-running debate: whether a single act of violence should be used to justify broad limits on legal immigration channels, and what is lost when such channels close.
A program designed to widen access
The diversity visa program was established by Congress in 1990 to address imbalances in the US immigration system, which has historically favored applicants with close family ties or employer sponsorship.As the American Immigration Council noted in a 2017 report, people without US-based family members or sponsoring employers have few avenues for permanent, legal immigration — regardless of education, language skills or other qualifications.Each year, the federal government reviews immigration patterns from the previous five years and allocates diversity visas to regions and countries with lower levels of representation. According to State Department figures, this year roughly 35,000 visas were set aside for applicants from Africa, 15,000 for Asia, and about 8,500 for Europe.Winning the lottery does not guarantee entry. Selected applicants must still complete applications, interviews and security checks. The odds of selection are low: the State Department said nearly 21 million people applied during a 37-day period last year, with about 130,000 applicants and family members selected for further processing.
An administration already hostile to the lottery
The diversity visa program had already been targeted by senior officials in the Trump administration before the Brown and MIT shootings.Joseph Edlow, the head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in September that he wanted to see the program eliminated. In an interview with The Associated Press, Edlow said he favored a merit-based system tied more directly to economic outcomes and questioned the value of the lottery model.“I’ve never really seen at this point the efficacy and the utility to continue the diversity visa,” Edlow told AP, while acknowledging that Congress would ultimately decide the program’s fate.President Trump has also criticized the lottery in the past. During his first term, he described it as bringing in “the worst of the worst,” a claim immigration experts have repeatedly disputed.Whether the administration has the authority to pause the program without congressional action remains unclear. Legal experts told AP that while Congress created the diversity visa, the executive branch controls its administration, setting the stage for potential court challenges if the suspension becomes prolonged.
Vetting, violence and collective consequences
Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the pause as a review of screening procedures rather than a judgment on all diversity visa recipients.“The reason why you suspend this program is not because you argue everybody who came in under that visa is a bad person,” Rubio said at a news conference, according to AP. “It’s because you want to determine whether there’s something in the vetting of that program that’s insufficient.”He did not directly address how the suspect’s case exposed a specific weakness in the system.Critics argue that the administration’s response reflects a broader pattern: using isolated acts of violence to justify restrictions on entire categories of legal immigrants.“This is the latest instance of the administration leveraging an isolated evil action to advance its goal of dramatically reducing legal immigration,” Myal Greene, president of World Relief, told AP.Immigration experts also note that diversity visa recipients undergo the same background checks and screenings as other immigrant visa holders, and that immigrants, as a group, commit violent crime at lower rates than native-born Americans.
A familiar pattern of restriction
The pause of the diversity visa program follows earlier actions taken after violent incidents involving foreign nationals.After the shooting of two National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. by an Afghan national, the administration suspended all asylum decisions processed by USCIS and halted immigration benefits for Afghan nationals. It also tightened screening and eligibility rules for applicants from 19 countries labeled “high-risk,” including Afghanistan.In June, Trump announced a travel ban tied to an attack in Boulder, Colorado, citing visa overstays as a security concern. The suspect in that case was from Egypt, a country not included in the restrictions.Earlier this week, the administration expanded the travel ban to include 20 additional countries. Meanwhile, the US refugee admissions program, once a major component of humanitarian immigration, has been reduced to a fraction of its previous scale.
What happens next
For now, the diversity visa pause represents another narrowing of legal immigration options, particularly for applicants without family or employer sponsorship. The immediate impact will be felt not in headlines, but in applications frozen, interviews delayed, and pathways quietly closed.Whether the suspension becomes permanent will depend on congressional action, court challenges and the administration’s broader strategy. What is clear is that the diversity visa, long obscure to the public, has become a central test case in how the US responds to violence: by focusing on individual accountability, or by reshaping entire systems of entry.
