Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has sus­pend­ed the green card lot­tery pro­gramme.

The pro­gramme al­lowed the sus­pect in the Brown Uni­ver­si­ty and MIT shoot­ings to come to the Unit­ed States. (See page 14)

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.

The di­ver­si­ty visa pro­gramme makes up to 50,000 green cards avail­able each year by lot­tery to peo­ple from coun­tries that are un­der-rep­re­sent­ed in the US, many of them in Africa and the Caribbean.

The lot­tery was cre­at­ed by Con­gress, and the move is al­most cer­tain to in­vite le­gal chal­lenges.

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 US.

Lot­tery win­ners are in­vit­ed to ap­ply for a green card. They are in­ter­viewed at con­sulates and sub­ject to the same re­quire­ments and vet­ting as oth­er green-card ap­pli­cants.

Trump has long op­posed the di­ver­si­ty visa lot­tery.

Noem’s an­nounce­ment is the lat­est ex­am­ple of us­ing tragedy to ad­vance im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy goals.

While pur­su­ing mass de­por­ta­tion, Trump has sought to lim­it or elim­i­nate av­enues to le­gal im­mi­gra­tion.

He has not been de­terred if they are en­shrined in law, like the di­ver­si­ty visa lot­tery, or the Con­sti­tu­tion, as with a right to cit­i­zen­ship for any­one born on US soil. AP