US HOMELAND SECURITY chief Kristi Noem suspended the green card lottery programme on yesterday, saying it was used by the suspect in a mass shooting at Brown University.

Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, is accused of bursting into a building at the Ivy League school on 13 Dec and opening fire on students sitting exams, killing two and wounding nine.

He is also accused of killing a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) two days later.

Noem wrote on social media that Neves Valente “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card.”

“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” Noem wrote.

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

Neves Valente was found dead by suicide after a days-long manhunt, police said on Thursday evening.

The US green card lottery grants up to 55,000 permanent resident visas annually to people “from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States,” according to the State Department.

Ireland is one of the countries that can access the lottery, and it has been used by Irish people in the past. To qualify, applicants must have at least a high school education or two years of training or work experience.

They also go through a vetting process that includes an interview.

With reporting from Cormac Fitzgerald