Recovering files deleted via sudo
Please stop writing to your hard drive this instant. That means turning it off if your system is running from said hard drive. The more you write on the HD, the more likely you are to write over the data you want to recover. And a running OS is writing on the HD.

Once you’ve done that, I can’t think of any reason why there would be any difference between files you’ve erased by emptying the Trash and files you’ve rmed1. 

So the best solution you have is:


Boot from another disk.
Run a recovery utility such as Data Rescue.




1. By the way, why rm the Trash?