Washington | President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery programme on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that at Trump's direction she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the programme.

“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said.

The diversity visa programme makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the United States, many of them in Africa.

Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.