MIT Suspends, Evicts MBA Student Zeno for Pro-Palestinian Protest Participation

President Donald Trump ordered the immediate suspension of the diversity visa lottery program Thursday, responding to the discovery that the suspect in last week's deadly shootings at Brown University and MIT entered the United States through the program that awards green cards by random selection.

The executive action affects up to 50,000 green cards annually and throws into uncertainty the status of approximately 131,000 lottery winners selected for 2025, including their spouses. For universities across the country—which rely on the program as one pathway for international students, researchers, and faculty to remain in the U.S.—the suspension marks another complication in an already difficult immigration landscape.

The Shootings That Sparked the Ban

Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, was identified as the suspect in the December 13 mass shooting at Brown University that killed two students—Ella Cook, 19, and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, 18—and wounded nine others. Valente is also believed responsible for the shooting death of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, 47, two days later in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Neves Valente studied at Brown University on a student visa beginning in 2000, but entered the United States through the diversity visa program in 2017 and was issued a green card. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire.

Both Neves Valente and Loureiro studied physics at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal in the late 1990s and are believed to have known each other. Investigators believe Loureiro was specifically targeted, while the two students killed at Brown were not direct targets.

The tragedy unfolded during finals week. A masked man carrying a handgun entered a first-floor classroom in the Barus & Holley engineering building where students were participating in an economics study session and started shooting. The campus was placed on lockdown for hours as hundreds of officers searched for the gunman.

A Program Created by Congress Now Halted by Executive Order

The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses.

The program was established by Congress in 1990 to promote immigration from countries underrepresented in the U.S. immigration system. Countries like India, China, Mexico, and the United Kingdom—which send large numbers of immigrants through other pathways—are excluded from the lottery. Instead, it targets nations from Africa, Eastern Europe, and other regions with historically low immigration rates.

But the lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges. Legal scholars are already questioning whether a president can unilaterally suspend a program mandated by federal statute without congressional approval. Universities, immigration advocacy groups, and potentially state governments are expected to file suit.

The University Connection: More Than Just the Suspect

While Trump's administration framed the suspension as a national security response to the Brown and MIT shootings, the connection between the diversity lottery and these specific crimes is tenuous at best. Neves Valente was already in the United States on a student visa for years before obtaining his diversity visa green card in 2017. His status as a former Brown student—not his lottery green card—gave him familiarity with the campus where he committed the attack.

What the executive order obscures is the program's actual role in American higher education. International students can enter the diversity lottery, and many do so as one potential pathway to remain in the U.S. after graduation. For students from eligible countries who don't qualify for H-1B work visas or whose employers won't sponsor employment-based green cards, the lottery represents one of few options for permanent residency.

The traditional path for international students seeking to stay in the U.S.—F-1 student visa, Optional Practical Training, H-1B work visa, then employment-based green card—has become increasingly difficult. In 2024, USCIS received more than 700,000 H-1B registrations for just 85,000 available slots. The Trump administration has proposed imposing a $100,000 fee per H-1B employee, further restricting this pathway.

For graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and junior faculty from countries with low immigration rates to the U.S., the diversity lottery has served as a safety valve—a way to build lives and careers in America even when traditional employer-sponsored pathways aren't available or involve decade-long wait times.

What Universities Stand to Lose

The immediate impact falls on current diversity lottery winners who are affiliated with U.S. universities—either as students completing degrees, researchers on temporary visas, or academic professionals hoping to transition to permanent positions.

Universities employ thousands of international scholars whose immigration status depends on a complex web of temporary visas. Many rely on the diversity lottery as a backup plan or alternative pathway when their institutions cannot or will not sponsor employment-based green cards. Lab technicians, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars, and non-tenure-track faculty often lack access to employer sponsorship and have turned to the lottery as their best option for permanent residency.

The suspension also affects recruitment and retention. International students considering U.S. universities now face an even more uncertain immigration landscape. For students from diversity lottery-eligible countries, the program represented potential long-term stability. Without it, talented students may choose universities in Canada, the United Kingdom, or Australia instead—countries that offer clearer pathways to permanent residency.

"The diversity lottery has been an underutilized but important tool for international talent retention," said one university immigration advisor who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the topic. "It's not perfect, but for students and researchers from countries without large immigrant communities in the U.S., it was sometimes their only realistic option."

The Pattern of Policy by Tragedy

The diversity lottery suspension is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump's administration imposed sweeping rules affecting Afghan refugee admissions and vetting procedures.

This approach—responding to individual crimes committed by foreign nationals with broad policy restrictions—follows a familiar pattern. In 2017, after an Uzbek immigrant who came through the diversity lottery drove a truck down a Manhattan bike path killing eight people, Trump called for eliminating the program. That attempt failed in Congress despite bipartisan discussion of immigration reform.

Critics argue this methodology is fundamentally flawed. The diversity lottery includes background checks and security vetting for all winners. While no system is perfect, isolated crimes committed by lottery winners don't necessarily indicate systemic security failures. Millions of Americans commit violent crimes each year, but policymakers don't respond by eliminating the programs or pathways through which their parents or grandparents arrived.

For universities, the concern extends beyond this specific program. If the administration continues to use individual tragic incidents as justification for sweeping immigration restrictions, virtually any visa category could be targeted after a crime—including student visas, researcher visas, and academic exchange programs.

The Legal Battle Ahead

Constitutional law experts predict immediate legal challenges. The diversity lottery isn't a discretionary program that presidents can start or stop—it's a statutory requirement created by the Immigration Act of 1990. Congress appropriated visa numbers specifically for this purpose. Suspending the program likely requires congressional action, not executive fiat.

Universities could have legal standing to sue. If they can demonstrate concrete harm—such as the inability to retain specific researchers or faculty members whose status depends on pending diversity lottery applications—they may join legal challenges alongside immigration advocacy organizations and potentially state attorneys general.

The timing complicates matters. The fiscal year 2025 diversity lottery is already underway, with winners selected and many in various stages of the application process. Some have paid fees, submitted documentation, and made life decisions based on their lottery selection. Retroactively suspending their applications raises additional legal questions about due process and reliance interests.

What This Means for Campus Immigration Offices

University immigration advisors are scrambling to counsel affected students and scholars. Those who won the 2025 diversity lottery but haven't yet filed their green card applications are in limbo. Those with applications in progress may see them suspended indefinitely or denied outright.

International student offices are already fielding anxious questions from students from diversity lottery-eligible countries about their long-term prospects in the U.S. Without the lottery as a safety net, advisors have few good options to offer students who can't access H-1B visas or employment sponsorship.

Some universities are considering whether to increase resources for employment-based green card sponsorship to partially compensate for the lottery's suspension. But this is expensive, time-consuming, and not available for all positions. A university might sponsor a tenure-track professor but not a lab technician or administrative staff member—even if both are equally talented and deserving of permanent residency.

The uncertainty also affects academic planning. Principal investigators who employ international postdoctoral researchers now face additional complications in workforce planning. If their researchers can't access pathways to permanent residency, they may leave the U.S., disrupting ongoing projects and forcing labs to constantly recruit and retrain rather than retaining experienced personnel.

The Broader Immigration Landscape for International Students

The diversity lottery suspension fits within a broader pattern of immigration restriction that has made the United States less attractive to international students and researchers. Beyond this executive action, international students face:

  • Proposed $100,000 fees for H-1B employment
  • Stricter H-1B eligibility definitions favoring higher wages
  • Lottery odds of roughly 12% for H-1B visas
  • Employment-based green card backlogs exceeding a decade for some countries
  • Uncertainty about whether student visas will be renewed or extended

Each restriction individually might seem targeted or reasonable. Cumulatively, they create an environment where talented international students increasingly see the United States as a place to get a degree, not to build a career. Canada, which offers clear pathways to permanent residency for international graduates, has become increasingly attractive.

"We're essentially telling the world's brightest students: Come here, get educated at our expense, then leave," said one university president who requested anonymity. "It's brain drain in reverse, and it's terrible policy."

What Happens Next

In the immediate term, universities are advising affected students and scholars to consult with immigration attorneys. Those with pending diversity lottery applications should preserve all documentation. Those contemplating applying to future lotteries—if the program is eventually reinstated—should understand that the pathway has become far more uncertain.

Legal challenges will likely be filed within days. Multiple organizations have already announced intentions to sue, arguing the executive order exceeds presidential authority. These cases could take months or years to resolve, leaving tens of thousands of lottery winners in legal limbo.

Congress could act to either codify the suspension (making it permanent) or to explicitly protect the program from executive interference. Given the current political climate, neither outcome seems certain. The program has critics in both parties, but it also has defenders who see it as serving America's interests in maintaining diverse immigration pathways.

For Brown University, MIT, and their communities, the policy debate feels almost beside the point. Two students and a professor are dead. Nine people were wounded. Families are grieving. Campus communities are traumatized. Whether the diversity lottery program continues or ends won't bring back the victims or heal those wounds.

But how America responds to this tragedy—whether with measured reforms addressing genuine security concerns or with sweeping restrictions affecting hundreds of thousands of people with no connection to the crime—will reveal something important about whether we make immigration policy based on evidence and national interest, or on fear and political expediency.

For now, university immigration offices are preparing for a long period of uncertainty. They're counseling affected students, monitoring legal developments, and trying to help international community members navigate an immigration system that seems to grow more complex and hostile with each passing month.

The diversity lottery—a program that has brought scientists, entrepreneurs, teachers, and families to America for 35 years—sits in suspended animation, its future to be determined by courts, Congress, and an administration that has made clear its intentions to dramatically restrict legal immigration to the United States.

Originally published on University Herald