In what began on March 7 as a hunger strike demonstration with hundreds of detainees at a detention center in the state of Washington has dwindled down six days later to less than 10 remaining protesters.

The Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Wash., which holds about 1,300 people who are facing deportation upon investigation, has been the epicenter of an immigration reform protest this past week as 1,200 detainees refused to eat.

However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported only 550 demonstrators initially.

The hunger strikers are demanding that better food and safer working conditions be met for the detainees as well as for President Barack Obama to end deportations through an executive order.

Many of the detainees allege that detention center guards and personnel have been mistreating many of the inhabitants and were exploiting the possible deportees for work by paying them a $1 a day to perform kitchen and janitorial duties.

Nearly all of the demonstrators ended their protest because staff began threatening solitary confinement or to take away outdoor privileges, phone calls and visitation rights if they refused to eat and some went as far as to threaten force-feeding.

Sandy Restrepo, Colectiva Legal Del Pueblo immigration attorney, represents a few of the detainees and has been able to communicate with her clients during the week.

She said no one has been force fed yet but about five people who required medical examination after not eating for 72 hours are awaiting a doctor's recommendation and judge's approval to be force fed.

"Through every meal and every hour that the strike has gone on, retaliation and threats have been issued to people and that's part of the reason why the numbers started to dwindle," Restrepo said. "On Saturday people were placed on 24-hour confinement period and that really brought down a lot of morale and people were discouraged."

Anywhere from 100 to 150 detainees get deported on a weekly basis and about the same amount that goes out also come in, Restrepo said.

Restrepo said the detainees and the protesters are focusing on something more tangible that they can possibly change in the short term, which includes the conditions of the detention facility.

"The portions of the food, the rations are so small that I've had a client of mine telling me that when he was a detainee, dug food out of the trash can to have enough to eat," she said. "(Detainees) run the facility basically. They work in the kitchen, they do all the laundry, they do all of the different jobs, yet they only get paid a dollar a day because it's a voluntary work program."

She said the lack of immigration reform acts by President Obama and Congress are a longer discussion down the road.

"The immigration policy is of course something that's being worked on a national level and that's going to take a lot of time and negotiations," she said. "Their actions are in line with a bigger movement that's going on nationwide ... that's a broader, longer conversation with how we're going to move forward."

While the detainees were protesting inside, Restrepo said many civil rights organizations, immigration reform advocacy groups and labor unions such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Latino Advocacy gathered outside of the detention center for moral support.

"This issue is not just about immigrants, it's also about what conditions are like in prison and how inhumanely they're treated if you're in a detention facility," she said.

Maru Mora Villalpando, immigrant rights advocate with the Latino Advocacy, the conditions inside the facility are bad but the detainees lack representation and a formal voice to seek changes.

"What we're trying to do on the outside is to ensure that real negotiations happen, that these negotiations take place," Villalpando said. "We want negotiations that are accountable, that's why we've reached out to elected officials here in Washington, the congressional delegation, the governor."

Villalpando said throughout the week there had been about 200 to 300 people coming to protest outside of the detention center. She also said on Tuesday afternoon, police had to come and instruct protestors to leave because too many people had joined on the sidewalk.

"By 8 p.m. when we finished our demonstration, another group came ... they brought pans and pots and things to create a lot of noise so people on the inside could hear them," Villalpando said.

She said Latino Advocacy has been working with lawyers to halt the judge's permission and medical staff's use of force-feeding the remaining detainees.

Villalpando said she has been able to communicate with a detainee with the help of his wife. He told Villalpando he has been there for a little longer than six months but hasn't had his court hearing yet, which is supposed to be around the six-month mark, she said.

Villalpando said it has been difficult to assess how many hunger strikers there really are. On Wednesday she said she received conflicting reports from some detainees who told her there were seven, eight or nine protestors left.

She also said the facility staff has been keeping detainees from watching the news or listening to the radio and misleading them by saying the strike was already over

"In some instances (staff) would tell people, 'well, the hunger strike didn't work, nobody cares, the public is ignoring everything you guys are doing,'" Villalpando said. "And right now they're trying is to isolate them so people don't know how many are still on strike and just making them believe that on the outside nobody cares."

She said a previous civil disobedience demonstration Feb. 24 where Latino Advocacy members blocked the facility's gate, thwarting deportation vans from exiting, prompted and inspired the Northwest Detention Center detainees to stage their own protest.

"That was an action we planned for months and in the last bus that tried to leave, we were able to see through the windshield, people waving at us," she said. "So the one's that we about to be deported, witnessed out action."

Villalpando said their February demonstration was the 17th so far in a string of immigration reform protests but theirs was a unique incident where they blocked the buses.

"So (the detainees) figured that the only thing they could do was to use their bodies and their health to call for a hunger strike," she said. "They also told us the 120 people not deported that day, ICE blamed them for what happened because of our actions and so they retaliated against them," by taking away blankets and pillows.

Villalpando compared the recent wave of immigration reform advocacy to the many other civil rights movements that have happened in the nation.

"This is just how the movement has been growing and how undocumented people are not afraid anymore, and we're not ashamed," she lamented. "We actually think the government should be ashamed for creating this situation where they created a sea of undocumented people where we don't have access to a single piece of paper and instead they decided it was OK for corporations to make money out of our misery."

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement was unable to be reached for a comment.