By Muhammad Mamman
President Donald Trump has ordered an immediate suspension of the United States’ Green Card Lottery programme, a cornerstone of legal immigration that annually offers tens of thousands of permanent residency visas, the government announced on Friday.
The decision was disclosed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who said the action was taken at the president’s direction amid growing concerns over national security. The move comes in the wake of deadly shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), incidents authorities say were carried out by a man who entered the United States through the Diversity Visa Lottery, commonly known as the Green Card Lottery.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem wrote on the social media platform X, referring to the suspect, a Portuguese national who was later found dead from an apparent self-inflicted wound. At Trump’s instruction, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has been ordered to pause all Diversity Visa (DV1) processing “until further notice,” she said.
The Green Card Lottery, established by the U.S. Congress, is designed to expand immigration opportunities to people from countries with historically low rates of migration to the United States. The programme typically issues as many as 50,000 visas annually, with millions of applicants worldwide — including nearly 20 million for the 2025 cycle.
Critics of the suspension argue it marks a dramatic shift in U.S. immigration policy, targeting a long-standing legal route to permanent residency that has been defended by immigrant advocates and rights groups. Supporters of the administration’s action assert that national security must take precedence, especially when criminal acts are linked, as officials claim, to beneficiaries of the lottery.
The suspension is expected to face legal challenges and intense debate in the coming days, as immigrant communities and advocacy organisations mobilise against what they describe as “a punitive overreach.” Meanwhile, the Trump administration has framed the move as part of a broader effort to tighten immigration controls and reassess how foreign nationals enter and obtain residency in the United States.
