Mississippi office produces half of the nation’s passports. See where it is

Stennis Space Center in Hancock County is best known for testing rocket engines that launch astronauts into space but it is also home to a government office that produces half of the millions of passports used by Americans traveling the world.

For the past 15 years, the U.S. Government Publishing Office has been turning out millions of blank passport books for the U.S. Department of State, which then personalizes each passport for individual travelers. GPO has been producing U.S. passports for the state department since 1926.

Until the Stennis Secure Production Facility opened in 2008, the GPO office in Washington, D.C., was the only operation that produced U.S. passports. Production is split equally between the two facilities.

“Stennis was initially meant to be a backup site for the production of the U.S. passport. But our teammates there quickly proved their value and are critical to our overall secure credential production business,” GPO Director Hugh Nathanial Halpern said in a statement marking the Stennis plant’s 15th anniversary earlier this year.

The U.S. passport is widely considered to be one of the world’s most secure documents, and the Stennis location was selected in part because of the strict security measures already in place, including controlled access to the grounds. It is the only GPO facility in the state.

GPO employees at the Stennis Production Facility initially produced 1 to 2 million blank books a year as the plant got up and running. Since opening, the facility has produced a total of 91 million books. In addition to the passports, the employees have produced nearly 9.5 million secure credentials since 2013 for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The staff of 110 works two shifts a day on a 100,000 square foot production area inside the former Mississippi Army Ammunition Plant which houses several other agencies. GPO’s neighbors in the sprawling complex are Aerojet Rocketdyne, a rocket engine manufacturer, and Relativity Space, a rocket development, manufacturer and commercial launch company.

Of the 45 original GPO employees about 20 are still on the job, including Dave Spiers, the GPO operations manager.

The staff is made up of pressmen, bookbinders, printing plant wokers, IT professionals and engineers.

James Aaron, a bookbinder, also is one of the original GPO employees.

“I had been in the trade for 30 years, working at a mom-and-pop shop in Baltimore,” Aaron said. "Working here has been a great experience for me because we do everything we need to make our customer happy. I’d do another 15 years if I can."

Both Aaron and Spiers live in nearby Bay St. Louis. A GPO spokesman said that 70% of the staff live in Mississippi and the remainder are in Louisiana.

Making a passport is a complex process, and GPO does not reveal details for security reasons, but basically the book starts with a strip of blank paper which is cut, printed on a press with multiple security features and bound. “We end up with the final product ready for the Department of State to personalize,” Spiers said.

The COVID-19 pandemic shut down production for a few months.

“We came back full time with all the safety protocols in place because of demand for passports,” Spiers said. “The reason we came back was to make sure we didn’t get in a backlog situation. We’ve always had product for our customers.”

By 2022 the office was “fully functional in response to growing demand for passports,” he said.

The long wait for new passports and renewals has been widely reported this summer as more Americans returned to international travel following the COVID-19 shutdown. Spiers said the GPO production didn’t miss a beat in getting back to full production.

“The reason we came back quickly was to make sure we didn’t get in a backlog situation. We’ve always had product for our customers,” he said.

The State Department orders passport books from GPO based on their annual forecast. This year GPO was ahead of schedule.

“This fiscal year the total order was for around 22 million books. Now we are roughly 1 million books ahead of our own schedule for the year,” Spiers said.

Spiers said the Stennis staff is expected to grow up to 150 to meet the growing demand for passports which the State Department expects will grow from 15 million a year to more than 20 million for the foreseeable future. A GPO spokesman said, “We want to make sure we are positioned correctly to meet that demand.”

Spiers said, “This facility at Stennis has become an integral part of GPO’s operations to produce passports. It’s what we’re here to do: make the world’s best passports. I expect great things still in the future.”

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Mississippi office produces half of the nation’s passports