Is the deletion of files really permanent?

Deletion of assets is handled here

And as you can see only the assets DB entry (l.244) and its original file (l.247) are removed.

This means that thumbnail versions of the image will not be deleted, but they will also not be shown anymore as the thumbnail function is checking if the requested asset._id is still a valid (and it is not if deleted).

So the answer is:

NO, not all representations (orignal, thumbnail) of this image will be deleted.

YES, the image will not be available anymore in any form (original, thumbnail) via the API.

That being said, some users claim, that there seem to be some caching issues: Entries deleted inside Cockpit are retained in API - #3 by abernh .
I was so far not able to reproduce this issue.