President Donald Trump has suspended the US green card lottery scheme in the wake of a mass shooting at Brown University last week in which two people were killed.
The suspect, a Portuguese man who was found dead on Thursday, entered the country through the diversity lottery immigrant visa programme (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she has paused the visa scheme under Trump's direction to 'ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous programme'.
US officials said they believe the suspect, 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente, also killed Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno Loureiro earlier this week.
The programme makes up to 50,000 visas available each year through a random selection process among entries from countries with low rates of immigration to the US.
Writing on social media, Noem said Trump had previously 'fought to end' the scheme in 2017 after eight people were killed in a truck-ramming attack in New York City.
Valente was found dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, from what police believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a multi-state manhunt.
Brown University President Christina Paxson stated that Valente was enrolled at the university from the autumn of 2000 to the following spring for a PhD in physics and had 'no current active affiliation' with the institution.
Authorities said Valente shot and killed MIT professor Nuno F Gomes Loureiro, 47, on Monday at his home in Brookline. Both men had studied at the same university in Portugal in the late 1990s.
Two students were killed and nine others were injured when Valente opened fire in Brown University's engineering building during final exams, prompting a reevaluation of the lottery program.
