Yesterday morning, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) announced the arrest of 14 men accused of seeking to procure sex from a child.
One of the suspects, 42-year-old Joshua Brian Jivan, is an active supervisory agent at the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division. He is one of a growing number of federal agents who have been arrested for sex crimes targeting children.
Jivan allegedly made plans to have sex with a 14-year-old girl over the anonymizing “Whisper” app, but was in fact chatting with an undercover police officer. When detained, the agent showed officers his federal credentials and initially insisted that he was investigating human trafficking on behalf of DHS. Detectives later learned that he was not employed in the agency’s human trafficking division and none of his colleagues were aware of his supposed case work.
The agent deleted the app he used to arrange a romantic encounter with what he believed was a child and admitted to investigators that he was not acting in any legitimate law enforcement capacity. He then clammed up and asked for a lawyer.
Under the Biden administration, both the DHS and HSI have become increasingly politicized. The most controversial recent revelations about the agency have been regarding their constitutionally dubious secret domestic spying program, as well as their highly active role as agent provocateurs. Discovery in a recent federal trial found that there were 19 undercover HSI agents and informants embedded among the Proud Boys as they entered the Capitol on January 6th, outnumbering the eight FBI operatives.
HSI is designed to work in conjunction with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the direction of DHS, but a 2021 report in the Washington Post revealed that HSI agents were demanding Alejandro Mayorkas separate them from ICE due to the perception that the work of enforcing federal immigration laws is immoral, stigmatized and low status.
Joshua Jivan posted bail on June 3rd and is scheduled to appear at the Las Vegas Justice Court to face his charges on July 11th. As of the moment of this writing, DHS has not publicly commented on whether he continues to retain his employment as a federal agent.
