Federal authorities arrested 12 former Ector County Correctional Center (ECCC) guards and one former ECCC employee this morning for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for smuggling contraband to inmates inside the federal detention facility announced United States Attorney Robert Pitman and Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge Mark Morgan, El Paso Division.

The defendants are individually named in 13 federal grand jury indictments returned on January 23, 2013, and unsealed today. The indictments allege that during 2011 and 2012, the correctional officers, as well as Barbara Garrett, a food service worker,