A boom in late-stage and growth funding helped buoy venture funding in Latin America for the first quarter of 2026, Crunchbase data shows. Startups in Latin America raised a combined $1.03 billion across seed- and growth-stage deals in the three-month period ending March 31. That was up 12% year over year and down 6% from the fourth quarter. Of that total, $761 million went into late-stage and growth deals, up 158% compared to the $295 million that flowed into such deals in the first quarter of 2025. It's also up 203% compared with the $251 million in late-stage and growth rounds that were raised by LatAm startups in the 2025 fourth quarter. Nearly one-third of the total amount raised in the first quarter went to one startup. Mexico City-based Kavak, an online used car marketplace, secured a $300 million Series F financing led by Andreessen Horowitz and WCM Investment Management in February. Historically, Brazil has been the powerhouse in Latin America for venture capital funding. But it's not the first time in recent quarters that Mexico has topped Latin America's largest country. Mexico also raised more funding in the second quarter of 2025....

Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez, the two federal immigration agents who killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, are Latinos from South Texas'Ochoa a Border Patrol agent, Gutierrez a Customs and Border Protection officer. Statistically speaking, this should come as no surprise. Over the past half century, Latinos went from making up a negligible fraction of Border Patrol agents to constituting half of the entire force. Latinos have been central to the work done by the Border Patrol for decades. But when ProPublica first revealed the agents' identities, back in February, I noticed progressives recoiling online at the thought that Latinos would participate in Donald Trump's mass-deportation campaign, and in the most violent way possible. That impulse, I think, stems from a still-common inclination to see Latinos as one-dimensional actors motivated primarily by their sense of solidarity with other Latinos. An accompanying, usually unspoken, belief is that feelings of ethnic solidarity ought to be more important than people's differing views of what's right and just. The same bad thinking led many Americans to assume that Latinos could never vote for Trump....

Immigration-enforcement officers have used tear gas on nonviolent protesters, broken into homes and cars, and killed people, including U.S. citizens. ICE and Customs and Border Protection have been behaving like an out-of-control police force. No wonder, then, that when lawyers and other advocates try to challenge these federal officials' abuses of power'in court and on the streets'they tend to reach for the same legal tool used to combat police violence: the Fourth Amendment, which guards against excessive force and 'unreasonable searches and seizures.' But this path comes with serious challenges. A pair of Supreme Court decisions has undercut the amendment's power against ICE and CBP, allowing evidence gathered in violation of its requirements to be used in deportation proceedings, and shielding agents from lawsuits seeking compensation for excessive force. Another strain of precedent makes obtaining court orders aimed at preventing ICE misconduct extremely hard. But there's another path to holding ICE and CBP accountable for abuses. As a federal agency, the Department of Homeland Security is subject to the dictates of federal administrative law, much of which is set forward in a powerful 1946 statute known as the Administrative Procedure Act. The APA is largely concerned with how agencies go about their business'setting forward, for instance, how they should issue regulations and resolve administrative disputes. The statute also allows courts to review potentially unlawful action, thereby ensuring agencies follow the Constitution, other federal laws, and their own rules and procedures....

Good morning & happy Tuesday! Today, all eyes are on Nubank, and why LatAm's digital banking giant is just getting started (deep dive into their Q4 & full 2025 year financials, breaking down the most important facts and figures, understanding what they mean & what's next for NU 0.00%'), and Meta, which is getting back to the stablecoin game again (what it's all about & why it matters + bonus deep dive into Stripe, which might be Meta's launch partner for stables, & the ultimate list of stablecoin resournces inside). So let's jump straight into the interesting stuff '' Earnings time ' NubankNU 0.00%', the world's largest digital banking platform outside of Asia, just posted its latest FY2025 financials, which confirmed what the market has been pricing in already: Nubank is a rare compounder that pairs hypergrowth with elite profitability. Its structural cost advantage - $0.80 monthly cost-to-serve versus $5-12 at incumbent Brazilian banks - is the engine that lets it profitably undercut legacy competitors while monetizing customers at an expanding rate....