Hi,
I faced the same issue when starting the delete job from SARA.
According to the spools it indicated that it was running in Test mode despite that I had not checked the Test mode checkbox in SARA.
I checked this deeper by analyzing the code and could see that Test mode checkbox controls (though table ARCH_USER) which variant that should be used in program RSEXARCD.
I the customizing I had SAP_2 as Test mode variant and SAP_1 as Live mode variant as settings for Delete program. Looked fine so far, but then I checked the actual variant settings and realized that both of them had the Test mode field set to 'X'. E.g. both variants was running RSEXARCD in test mode.
By correcting the Live mode variant it will delete the Idocs.
Hope it helps someone at least.
Best Regards
Jonas Marcusson