Immigration authorities raided an Omaha meat production plant Tuesday morning and took dozens of workers away in buses, leaving company officials bewildered because they said they had followed the law.

Chad Hartmann, president of the food packaging company, said the front office was stunned by the aggressive nature of federal officials’ raid and confused by why the company was targeted.
“My biggest issue is: why us?” Hartmann said. “We do everything by the book.”

The plant uses E-Verify, the federal database used to check the immigration status of employees. When he said as much to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who carried out the raid, they told him the E-Verify system “is broken.”