Trained negotiators are talking with a handful of asylum seekers who continue to protest at a detention centre east of Perth.
About a dozen detainees climbed onto the roof of the Yongah Hill Detention Centre near Northam on Thursday afternoon.
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection said on Friday morning that only a small number of detainees remained involved, and it's understood they are no longer on the roof.
"The centre is presently calm and stable and normal routines within the facility are being followed," the department said.
"Detainees are reminded that these types of protests have no effect on the outcome of processing of their cases."
Northam Shire president Steve Pollard said he believed the protesters were asylum seekers who had arrived by boat, who comprised about half of the centre's population of about 400 people.
The other half are known as "501s" and are people who have breached their visa conditions by overstaying or committing an offence.
Mr Pollard said it didn't appear the protest was related to tensions over the melding of the two groups, which sleep in separate compounds but are brought together for activities such as meals.
Yongah Hill was originally set up in 2012 to house single male asylum seekers, but is now taking in 501s from around the country following the closure of several immigration detention centres.
Mr Pollard said the protesters were angry about delays with their processing and unsuccessful appeals.
"They feel they have to keep going to the nth degree because they want to be here," he told AAP.
"The government's firmly convinced they shouldn't be here and they're convinced they should be.
"It just keeps playing along until somebody accepts the decision of the other."
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