A California-based federal judge appointed by Joe Biden has ordered the U.S. State Department to reinstate the Diversity Immigrant Visa lottery for fiscal year 2027 by this Sunday, forcing the Trump administration to reopen a program it suspended after a Portuguese national who entered through the lottery was suspected in the deadly Brown University shooting and the murder of an MIT professor.
U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta of the Southern District of California issued a preliminary injunction requiring Secretary of State Marco Rubio to publicly announce and open registration for the program, which awards permanent residency (green cards) to up to 55,000 applicants annually from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States. A large share of these visas go to applicants from Africa.
Registration is typically a random lottery with millions of entries; winners then face interviews and vetting.
According to Breitbart News, Judge Ohta’s injunction requires the State Department to open a 30-day electronic registration period by October 18 and notify selected applicants by November 19.
The government must then proceed with visa processing, subject to statutory eligibility requirements and the program’s annual limits.
As The Gateway Pundit reported in December 2025, President Donald Trump ordered the immediate suspension of the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (often called the green card lottery) after authorities identified the suspect in the Brown University and MIT attacks as a beneficiary of the program.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the pause, stating: “The Brown University shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card. This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country. … At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, had previously studied at Brown on a student visa before later obtaining the diversity visa and permanent residency.
He is believed to have opened fire in a Brown University lecture hall in December 2025, killing two students, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, and wounding nine others, then murdered MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro (a former classmate from Portugal) at his home before taking his own life.
The Trump administration did not open the fiscal year 2027 registration window on the normal schedule, effectively pausing the program amid national security reviews of screening and vetting.
Immigration lawyers, including California-based Red Eagle Law, sued and argued this amounted to a de facto cancellation of a program created by Congress in 1990.
Ohta ruled that the failure to open registration was arbitrary and capricious and ordered the State Department to announce the registration period (originally by midnight October 15, with later adjustments discussed), keep it open for at least 30 days, accept eligible electronic entries, notify selected applicants, and process applications under normal procedures until the available visas are issued or the fiscal year ends in September 2027.
Ohta, born in South Korea, was nominated by Biden in 2021 and confirmed to the Southern District of California. She previously served as a San Diego Superior Court judge after an appointment by California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Critics view the ruling as another example of an unelected Biden-appointed judge attempting to override the elected administration’s efforts to tighten immigration security following real-world attacks.
The Diversity Visa program has a troubled history with security failures. Trump previously sought to end it after the 2017 New York City truck attack by Sayfullo Saipov, who entered via the lottery and killed eight people.
Noem and Trump officials have repeatedly described the program as a “disastrous” pathway that prioritizes diversity over rigorous national-interest screening.
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