Seriously pissed

There's a journal out there that used to be my go to journal for reading and publication when I was a grad student. I liked the journal and the community. Then at some point a few years ago, the journal decided it needed to keep moving up its impact factor. They started becoming more selective and started changing the focus of what they published. They are going from engineering to more bio that happens to use engineering. Now most of the manuscripts I send to that journal get rejected without review. Ironically, they get published in lower impact journals and get more citations than the impact factor of this journal. While annoyed, I didn't mind too much, but my students care about the impact factor of the journal they publish in, and this one of the top journals in the general field of my research. I try to convince them that paper citations are more important than journal impact factor, but everyone knows that's not totally true.
I was pleasantly surprised when I was invited to submit an article for a special issue that this journal was putting together. I put together a manuscript that fits into what they are interested in and submitted. It was rejected. Now I'm really pissed. My students are going to be depressed. Who rejects invited contributions?