Is part of it because McDonalds, I think, started Chipotle? Another offshoot of the fat wars etc?
As far as I know, McDonald's divested itself from Chipotle some time ago. I may be misremembering, but I don't think so.
I'm getting the feeling unions are involved somehow.
This thought just entered my mind...
You can't unionize illegal aliens. So to begin a movement to unionize the fast food industry, you'd need a company to go after with which you can begin your movement. But they all hire illegal aliens to one extent or another. You need to create one that doesn't.
So you use the immigration bureaucracy to go after a restaurant that you already know hires illegal aliens almost exclusively, and force that company to hire legal American workers. You pick Chipotle because it is a high-profile target that everyone knows profits from illegal alien employees, so no one but la Raza will really bitch. You know the race-baiters will scream, but the public nature of the company's illegal alien hiring policy gives you cover. There's much more cover against charges of racism by moving against Chipotle than there would be trying to go after McDonalds or Wendy's in the same way. Chipotle's transgressions against immigration law are overt - in your face - while other retailers at least attempt to blend their illegals into the workforce.
Once that company has been made to comply with immigration law, and ICE knows that all the employees are legal citizens, they signal the SEIU, the union moves in, beginning a movement to unionize fast food workers under the SEIU, one chain at a time.
Just a rambling thought. But if I can think of it, so can they. And the government's singling out of this one restaurant chain seems too extraordinary to ignore motivations. You KNOW this is not just a case of the government trying to solve the illegal alien problem.