Local immigrants right groups respond to Trump's ICE raid announcement

PHOENIX (FOX 10) -- Following President Trump's announcement about ICE beginning to remove illegal aliens, Representative from immigrants rights groups gathered in Downtown Phoenix for a press briefing.

The main point of the gathering of various representatives from immigrant rights groups was to stop misinformation from spreading.

Roberto Reveles, founding president of Somos America, says after initial word broke of ICE raids, rumors ran rampant.

"We are trying to dispel the fear element and encouraging the decimination of fact-based information," said Roberto Revels.

The fact is, these raids are not random, but rather, the individuals targeted have been notified of their impending deportation for a while.

"The present orders for deportation involve only those individuals who are under court order to deport," explained Reveles. "They have gone through the process, the process has rendered their decision and so those are the people that are being affected by the publicized mass raids."

After the critical information was passed on regarding who would be subject to the raids, other representative spoke.

"In the beginning three and a half year ago it was mostly individuals from Mexico from south of the border, and now it's actually primarily Guatemalans," said James Pennington, with First Church United Church of Christ.

Pennington says that the main priority is to get those who wish to become citizens of the U.S. a more direct and clear path to do so.

"Our primary work is really trying to work with a broken system that we feel is broken to find a path to citizenship a quicker better more reasonable path to citizenship," said Pennington.