Is it possible to remove the contextual link for deleting a node?
You can implement hook_menu_contextual_links_alter() to remove the "delete" link from the contextual links. 

function YOURMODULE_menu_contextual_links_alter(&amp;$links, $router_item, $root_path){
  unset($links['node-delete']);
}


However, if your users are irresponsible enough to believe that "deleting" a node does not actually delete it, you may be better off simply removing those users' permissions to delete nodes at all.