
Let me tell you about the first time I realized America's immigration system wasn't just broken, it was actively trying to kill us. No, this wasn't some Fox News fever dream. This was sophomore year in college, 2016, when our campus security sent out one of those frantic emails nobody reads until the sirens start.
A student from Yemen whose parents had won the green card lottery years prior decided to celebrate his pending deportation by trying to light his dorm room on fire with homemade napalm. Actual napalm. Like that scene from Apocalypse Now. I remember laughing nervously with my roommate as we Googled whether napalm could melt cinderblock walls. You know, regular Tuesday night things.
That incident ended with smoke inhalation and misdemeanors, but today we're talking about two prestigious universities mourning professors, a suspect found dead, and a gaping hole in our national security big enough to drive a Mack Truck through. Let's connect the dots the mainstream media pretends don't exist.
According to law enforcement sources, the suspect entered the United States through the Diversity Visa Lottery Program. You know, that magical system where we literally pick random names out of a hat like we're selecting Hogwarts students instead of determining who gets access to American communities. President Trump suspended this insanity in 2017, calling it a breeding ground for fraud and extremism. Liberals lost their collective minds. Now we're scrubbing academic blood off Ivy League quads.
Let me pause here to address the inevitable shrieking headlines. No, I'm not saying every immigrant who comes through the lottery program is a future shooter. That's reductive nonsense, and frankly offensive. What I am saying is that systems without proper vetting inevitably become Trojan horses for tragedy. Trump understood this when he froze the lottery until we could implement extreme vetting protocols, while his critics were too busy sewing pink hats and planning airport protest signs to consider reality.
The human cost here isn't abstract policy debates. It's neuroscience researchers shot point blank in their homes. It's students barricading dorm rooms as police sweep campus. It's bereaved families who trusted these hallowed institutions to be safe spaces for intellectual exploration, not hunting grounds. For what? So CNN anchors can appear sufficiently virtuous by opposing every border security measure Trump proposed?
Here's what nobody tells you about the Diversity Visa Lottery. In 2020 alone, the State Department's own Office of Inspector General flagged over 17,000 potentially fraudulent applications. Seventeen thousand. That's not a margin of error, that's a wholesale demolition of any pretense of security. But when Trump tried to fix it, suddenly we were all supposed to clutch our pearls about Lady Liberty's poem welcoming the tired and poor. Honey, Emma Lazarus never had to dodge bullets in a Brown University library.
The media's selective amnesia on this issue would be funny if it weren't so dangerous. Remember when Obama's Department of Homeland Security acknowledged in 2013 that the lottery program was vulnerable to exploitation by terrorists? Of course you don't. The New York Times buried that nugget on page A17 between a coupon insert and the crossword puzzle. But when Trump uses that very vulnerability to justify reforms, suddenly he's violating some sacred American covenant? Spare me the performative outrage.
I learned this cognitive dissonance firsthand recently. A few months back, I stumbled into a Brooklyn dinner party where someone proudly declared they'd hosted a diversity visa winner from Uzbekistan. 'Such a beautiful soul,' they gushed between organic kale bites. When I asked if they'd bothered verifying whether said beautiful soul had ties to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan banned by the State Department, you'd think I'd suggested sacrificing their rescue dog to Moloch. The silence lasted so long I could hear their gentrified kombucha fermenting.
This is the moral rot Trump recognized in America's elite institutions. Universities who'd rather virtue signal about open borders than protect their own faculty. Media outlets who see dead professors as ratings opportunities rather than cautionary tales. Politicians who treat immigration policy like a game show where the only wrong answer is actually verifying contestants' backgrounds.
The left's most damning hypocrisy isn't their policy disagreements. It's their refusal to admit when their utopian ideals crash into grim reality. Brown University will host a candlelight vigil. MIT will form a committee on campus safety. Nancy Pelosi will tweet vaguely about 'common sense solutions' while blocking every border security bill. And not one of them will admit Trump had a point about suspending this reckless lottery system until we could ensure basic safety protocols.
Well, I'm admitting it now. Between my napalm enthusiast dorm neighbor and these murdered academics, I've seen enough stochastic violence to last a lifetime. America deserves better than Russian roulette immigration policies where the bullets turn out to be actual bullets. Ten months from now, when this case has faded from headlines and some new atrocity dominates the news cycle, remember this moment. Remember that for all the media demonization, Trump tried to close this deadly loophole while Democrats were too busy scoring political points to protect their own voters.
Our immigration system shouldn't play dice with American lives. We need solutions that prioritize public safety over performative wokeness. Until then, we'll keep mourning brilliant minds extinguished by political correctness turned lethal.
By Sophie Ellis