Trump's ex-DHS head cornered on massive impact of deporting '5 percent of the workforce'

CNN's Jake Tapper cornered Donald Trump's one-time acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf on how the president-elect's plans for mass deportation — which could cost massive amounts of money and require the deployment of the military — would actually work, and how the administration would avoid catastrophic economic damage.

Tapper began by noting that a huge amount of the workforce would meet Trump's apparent standard for deportation.

"What happens to the economy if 5 percent of the workforce is deported?" he asked.

"Again, you've got to prioritize the removals ... making sure you're removing the worst of the worst," said Wolf. "But this idea that you've got to turn your head and just exempt people from the law or from consequences of the law, deportation and the like, because they have a job here in the United States — we certainly need to take a look at that, but there are other ways and other mechanisms and, certainly, other visas that allow individuals to come in and to contribute to the U.S. economy. If the Congress wants do more, that's a debate they should have. But to simply say that we're going to turn our head and just ignore the fact that the law's being broken, I don't think right approach."

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"Are Trump transition team members talking to Republican lawmakers to figure out how Trump will fund this plan?" asked Tapper.

"Well, I'll let the transition team speak for itself," said Wolf, adding that he "would suspect" they are.

"I think that's really important because it's not only just a change in policy, which obviously the president can do, but obviously there's going to be some resources required to make sure that those policies are implemented in a way that's smart and consistent and that's sustainable over the long term," he said.

"What about the impact — again, I'm not arguing in favor, pro or con against any of this," Tapper pressed him. "But what about — say there is an undocumented gentleman and he's married to an American citizen and they have children. Does he get deported? What if both parents are undocumented, but the kid was born in this country? Do all three get deported? Is somebody gaming out all of these different permutations of the various statuses of these people?"

"Well, Jake, I'm not going to get into hypotheticals because the background of all these individuals really, really matter," he said, but repeated, "You go back to the prioritization of removing the worst of the worst first."

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