An Arkansas community founded by Italian immigrants becomes a flashpoint over ICE

The festival grew out of a picnic started by Italian immigrants who migrated to Arkansas in the late 1800s. But this year, an immigrant advocacy group has called for a boycott of the event over the Tontitown Police Department’s participation in a federal immigration program. 

Alliance for Immigrant Respect and Education, or AIRE, argued the program is causing fear among immigrant communities, while the department said it helps officers better protect residents. 

The local conflict comes amid a national immigration crackdown during President Donald Trump’s second term. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported more than 43,000 arrests in June, a record under this administration. 

Federal immigration officers have also shot 22 people and killed six, including three U.S. citizens, since Trump returned to the White House in 2025. Most shootings have stemmed from traffic stops. 

Caught in the middle of the local debate is the festival. Though Tontitown police officers are hired for security, the five-day festival is not a city-sponsored event. It’s organized by St. Joseph’s, and the fundraiser’s proceeds account for about a quarter of the church’s operating budget, festival chairman Blake Ceola said. 

Thousands of people attend the festival, said Ceola, a Tontitown native who notes the annual event is about community and reacquainting with neighbors. Ceola said he was surprised to learn of the boycott, but organizers will be accommodating if people peacefully protest. 

“If people want to boycott or protest, they are welcome. They have that right,” he said. “But again, we will be accommodating. We want everyone to come out and enjoy the festival and celebrate the Italian heritage.”

Immigrant roots

Italian and American flags hang over the entrance of a small, white building located across the street from the festival grounds. Once home to some of the town’s original settlers, the building now houses the Tontitown Historical Museum. 

The 765-square-foot museum is filled with artifacts, including sparkling Queen Concordia tiaras awarded to young women at the Tontitown Grape Festival, vestments worn by settler leader, Father Pietro Bandini, and a multicolored stained glass window from the first church that survived a tornado in 1934. 

There’s also lots of black and white photos and newspaper clippings, including an 1895 article from The Springdale News on a large colony of Italians — referred to in the story by an ethnic slur — migrating to southeast Arkansas to work on a plantation.

“When my family arrived here in 1895, we were not wanted. They did not want Italians in Arkansas,” museum manager Emily Pianalto-Beshears said. 

Italians coming to the United States to escape high taxation and forced military service were paid less than Irish and German immigrants, exploited by bankers and swindled by their own people, she said. Italian immigrants also faced violent attacks and politicians created laws to stop them from immigrating to the U.S.

Enclaves formed by Italian immigrants in the 1800s and early 1900s in Arkansas remain in the state, including the community of Little Italy in central Arkansas.

Pianalto-Beshears’ ancestors were among several Italian families who migrated to Chicot County to work on a cotton plantation. The owner had anti-immigrant sentiments, but he struggled to find workers and eventually recruited Italians after speaking with his niece and her husband, the mayor of Rome. 

The settlers were promised 12.5 acres and a furnished home, which they received. But it also came with a lack of drinking water and illnesses, such as dysentery, malaria and yellow fever, that resulted in several deaths, Pianalto-Beshears said. 

Bandini, who worked at Ellis Island and advocated for Italian immigrants, moved to Arkansas to serve as the parish priest for the Italians, she said.

When conditions on the plantation didn’t improve, Bandini and about 40 families relocated to the northwestern part of the state in 1898. Their settlement became Tontitown, named for Henri de Tonti who in 1686 helped establish Arkansas Post, the first permanent European settlement in the lower Mississippi River Valley. 

The immigrants, who faced suspicion from locals and were charged about double for their land purchase, dealt with hurled stones, harassing gunshots and arson, Pinalto-Beshears said. 

Bandini once extinguished a fire set to the corner of a one-room schoolhouse that also served as a church. All items in that area were destroyed except a portrait of St. Joseph, which is how the church got its name, she said. 

The immigrants hosted their first potluck in June 1898 to celebrate the land they were farming and Bandini for leading them to their new home. Bandini began inviting local officials to the picnic in 1913.

“The picnic was seen as a way to invite outsiders in and to also let the Italians learn from their neighbors,” Pinalto-Beshears said. 

As the picnic evolved into a celebration of the vineyards and grapes they sold commercially, the event moved to August during the harvest. 

The festival remains a touchstone for descendants, including those who no longer live in Tontitown. Some have come to the festival from as far away as Italy, Pianalto-Beshears said. Reminiscing volunteers from multiple generations can be found inside the parish hall making thousands of pounds of pasta for spaghetti dinners in the weeks leading up to the festival.

“It’s still, to this day, the thing that brings a lot of people back home,” Pianalto-Beshears said. 

As the festival has changed, so too has the town’s demographics. More than 6% of Tontitown’s 8,000-person population is Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census. About 4% of residents are Asian, 3% are Black, 2% are Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander and 12.5% identify as two or more races. 

Pianalto-Beshears said something that resonates with most museum visitors is that “our immigrant story is being retold today with a different group of people — the new other.” 

There’s always going to a new group that people don’t understand, she said. 

“They don’t understand the culture, they don’t understand the language, and they don’t want to,” she said. “And that’s the hard part is when every single person in America looks back into their heritage, into their genealogy, unless you are Native American, you have an immigrant story.”

Pianalto-Beshaears marvels at the bravery of Italians who moved to an unknown country where they sacrificed to ensure their descendants had the opportunity for a better life. 

“Without their sacrifice of being the ones having stones thrown at them…they went through that so that way today I can talk about it,” she said. “I can speak to the fact that I didn’t have a rock thrown at me for being Italian. [My great grandfather] did. I didn’t.”

Community safety

Tontitown’s heritage remains visible today through historic Italian restaurants and street signs. A bronze statue of an Italian immigrant with a suitcase in one hand and his hat in the other stands outside city hall. The monument’s granite base bears the name of early Italian settlers. 

City hall and the police department are housed in a municipal building adjacent to the museum and a bustling four-lane highway that runs through the heart of town. 

A major east-west corridor for drivers crossing the Oklahoma border, Tontitown Police Chief Corey Jenison said Highway 412 generates more criminal activity than the rest of town. 

The federal 287(g) program can help officers properly identify foreign-born individuals they encounter and check if they’re wanted for crimes in other countries, Jenison said. The federal program, which has three models, allows state and local law enforcement to perform specific immigration duties.

“This agreement allows us to work with immigration and it gives us another tool to make our community safe,” he said.

A 2025 Arkansas law requires Division of Correction and county sheriffs to participate in the model that permits local law enforcement to serve administrative warrants on immigrants in their custody. 

Tontitown’s police department signed an agreement in June to participate in the task force model, which allows designated immigration officers to enforce limited immigration authority while performing routine police duties or as an active participant in an ICE-led task force.

Forty-four Arkansas municipalities have opted into the 287(g) program. Participants are eligible for reimbursements and stipends for gear, equipment and IT, Jenison said. The federal funding was not necessarily a factor in joining the program, but a benefit because Tontitown is building a new police department, he said.

Immigrant families feel unsafe attending this year’s festival because of the police department’s participation in the 287(g) program, according to a statement from AIRE, the group boycotting the event.

“Across the country, we continue to witness tragic acts of violence targeting immigrants and growing fear within immigrant communities,” the group said. “In this climate, we believe it is our responsibility to inform our community when policies or actions may increase fear of immigration enforcement or the risk of family separation.”

Jenison said officers aren’t setting up checkpoints or asking people who look foreign for their immigration status because “that’s racial profiling and we cannot do that.”

Concerns about racial profiling were heightened last year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled immigration officers could use “apparent ethnicity” as a factor in determining reasonable suspicion, as long as it wasn’t the only factor. 

Because the 287(g) program allows immigration status to be checked during police officers’ regular duties, Jenison said he’s heard immigrants are afraid to contact the department for assistance. 

“We don’t want anybody to be afraid to call us regardless of your immigration status,” he said. “When we show up, if you’re asking for our help, that’s what we’re here to do.”

Immigration status is not the concern when someone is a victim of crime, Jenison said. Police address the issue they were called for, said Jenison who admitted he understands the challenge in people believing him. 

“There’s not going to be a way that I can really show or prove [that] to anybody and that’s kind of the struggle we have,” he said. 

The festival has been “collateral damage” in this dispute, said Jenison, who noted the city doesn’t receive event proceeds. Officers are contracted to provide security, but immigration enforcement is not their focus, he said. 

AIRE argued the city does benefit through increased sales tax revenue to local businesses. The boycott is not directed at St. Joseph’s, and AIRE has shared its concerns with the church, according to their statement. 

While AIRE respects the church’s important role in the community, the Arkansas-based group said its main concern is immigrant safety. The group is encouraging people to not spend money in Tontitown until the city ends its participation in the 287(g) program. 

“We will continue organizing peaceful economic campaigns around events held in Tontitown because economic participation is a powerful form of civic engagement,” AIRE said. “We believe our community has the right to support businesses and municipalities whose policies reflect dignity, safety, and inclusion for all residents.”