A recount in a Massachusetts State House of Representatives race put the Democratic challenger ahead of the Republican incumbent by just one vote.

Lenny Mirra, the GOP state legislator running in a newly redrawn North Shore district, says he will go to court, raising concerns about spoiled ballots and the possibility of signatures on mail-in votes not matching their envelopes.

“It’ll absolutely be a legal challenge,” Mirra said, according to State House News Service.

Democratic rival Kristin Kassner submitted a petition asking for a recount after she trailed Mirra by 10 votes out of more than 23,000 cast in the original certified results.

Data from Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin’s office, as reported by the news service, reported that Kassner picked up an additional 19 votes in the recount, while Mirra added nine across multiple towns and lost one in Rowley.

“We are not suspicious of anything that ever happened. [The recount] was just really just to ensure that, between humans and machines, we really caught every vote that was counted,” Kassner said, per the report.

The tallies from the recount, which were completed Thursday and have not yet been certified by the Governor’s Council, show Kassner with 11,763 votes and Mirra with 11,762.

Mirra, a five-term legislator, says he got “totally screwed” with the redistricting process. “I lost five of my seven towns. Usually, a rep district changes by maybe five percent or 10 percent,” Mirra added. “It’s an unheard-of amount of change for my district. It was devastating because it’s like starting all over. There was no benefit to being the incumbent because we were a complete unknown in these new towns.”

Another recount in the state’s First Middlesex District could also lead to a court battle, according to Politico. In that race, Republican Andrew Shepherd petitioned for a recount after the initial count put Democrat Margaret Scarsdale ahead by 17 votes. The deadline for communities in that district to finish counting is Saturday.

Regardless of the outcome in either race, Democrats will maintain majorities in the state House and Senate regardless, and they won control of the governorship this cycle.

These are not the only close state House races that have come out of the November midterm elections.

In Iowa, a state legislative race flipped in favor of Republican candidate Luana Stoltenberg by a thin margin following multiple recounts. Her Democratic rival, Craig Cooper, conceded defeat after a three-member board determined Stoltenberg won by a mere 11 votes.

Deportations of illegal aliens convicted of or arrested for crimes have declined massively under the Biden administration in recent years, according to a new report. 

The report, from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), said that there was a 71% decline in removals of illegal aliens who had been arrested for a crime under Biden and a substantial decrease in the removal of convicted felons. 

“Immigration enforcement in the interior of the country has dropped dramatically under President Biden’s policies. These policies have exempted nearly all but the most serious criminal aliens from arrest and removal and have imposed cumbersome new procedures and paperwork for ICE officers to complete cases,” wrote Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for CIS.

During President Joe Biden’s first nine months in office, only 16,351 individuals were removed after being arrested compared to nearly 56,000 during the same period in 2019 under former President Donald Trump. 

According to the report, deportations of convicted felons fell by 9,000 from the 2020 fiscal year to the 2021 fiscal year while overall removals fell from 186,000 to 59,000 in that same period. The decline in removals came as the southern border saw record-high crossings for months. 

CIS used FOIA requests to obtain records from the Secure Communities initiative, which allows the sharing of data on illegal aliens arrested or detained for a crime. 

In Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont, enforcement actions fell by 80%. Some counties, including several in Georgia, saw enforcement fall 90%.

Vaughan said that local authorities should track the number of arrests they make of illegal aliens and report to ICE authorities and Congress the number of individuals who are not deported. 

The surge of crossings under Biden appears set to continue, with the Biden admin requesting $3 billion in funding before the end of Title 42, a Trump-era measure allowing some would-be asylum seekers to be turned back because of COVID.

DHS officials said that after Title 42 ends on December 21, crossings will likely increase even more. There are already nearly 8,000 crossings per day, which some Republicans have likened to an “invasion.”

“Texas is under siege from this invasion every day and our delegation is tired of watching the Biden Administration have ‘more important things to do’ than protect our fellow Texans and Americans from cartels, terrorists, fentanyl traffickers, human traffickers, human smugglers, and murderers,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said Thursday while rolling out a proposal from Texas Republicans to secure the border.