“It makes a person feel kind of angry,” Mayor Bob Penrod says in a special report on CNN.com. “It’s been nothing but a freaking nightmare since May.”

On May 12, nearly 400 Agriprocessors were rounded up, shackled and sent to the National Cattle Congress complex for processing. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say that an additional 300 undocumented workers fled the town with their families. In a town of 2,400 people, Postville lost about 700 residents overnight.

“When you have a raid like that, it’s beyond your recognition,” Penrod said. “It was like nothing you ever dreamed like. Believe me.”

Aaron Goldsmith, a former Postville city council member, questioned ICE’s decision to raid a small town in Iowa instead of a place like Los Angeles, which has “more political clout.

“So they go to a place with no political backbone. They go to a place where the government’s willing to throw us to the dogs,” he said.

ICE Spokesman Tim Counts stated that ICE did not create the undocumented worker problem in Postville.

“While we understand that our actions have an impact on communities, the responsibility for and disruption lies squarely with the law violators, not with the agency responsible for carrying out the law,” he said. He also pointed out the problems for U.S. citizens who had their identities stolen by the undocumented workers, which can take months or years to resolve.