This article was prepared with the assistance of ABIL, the Alliance of Business Immigration Lawyers, of which Loan Huynh is an active member.
On December 18, 2025, President Donald Trump suspended the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, sometimes called the “green card lottery,” following shootings at Brown University and of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor by a Portuguese national who immigrated to the United States in 2017 under that program and obtained legal permanent residence (previously, he had been in the United States on a student visa but left school).
“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in a post on X.
