macOS Catalina - Empty folder in trash after login.

Many users get the Recovered Files folder. I get one each time I install Catalina. See If the Trash contains folders of recovered files on Mac - Apple Support. Once deleted it should not reappear in the Trash as far as I understand. Perhaps, you should try reinstalling Catalina.

Reinstall El Capitan or Later Without Erasing Drive

Please be sure you back up, if possible.

1. Restart the computer. Immediately, at or before the chime, hold down the Command and R keys until the Apple logo and progress bar appear. Wait until the Utility Menu appears.
2. Select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button.
3. Select the indented (usually, Macintosh HD) volume entry from the side list.
4. Click on the First Aid button in Disk Utility's toolbar. Wait until the Done button activates, then click on it.
5. Quit Disk Utility and return to the Utility Menu.
6. Select Install OS X and click on the Continue button.

Do you have an empty Home folder on the internal drive? You should keep the original one created when you installed macOS. Rather than moving the Home folder to an external drive you can move the folders in the Home folder - Documents, Downloads, Movies, Music, and Pictures. These are the ones containing most of your data. Then create aliases to those folders and replace the folders in the internal Home folder with the aliases.

This method involving the Terminal and aliases is discussed in depth here: Using OS X with an SSD plus HDD setup - Matt Gemmell. This is my preferred approach because I can select which of the Home's folders I want on the HDD and which I don't want. For example, I like to keep the Documents and Library folders on the SSD because I access their content frequently.

Quite frustrating. I did some more searching for a possible solution. I found the following, excerpted from a reply about a similar problem:

If you're interested in tracking down the culprit, try this:

• • Reboot, empty your trash, and reboot again. If Recovered Files appears in your trash after the second reboot, the culprit is an application that launches on login (check through apps that create icons in the upper-right menubar.)
  • If no Recovered Files appears, try opening an application you use frequently, using it a little bit (make a new document, save something) and reboot. See if Recovered Files appears. Repeat until found.

Perhaps, this may help.

You may try this:

Open the Terminal in the Utilities' folder and paste the following at the prompt:

    rm -Rf

^ is a space after -Rf

Open the Trash, select the Recovered Files folder, then drag it into the Terminal window. Press RETURN. The folder should disappear. If you get a permission error, then the folder is protected. Add "sudo " in front of rm -Rf ("sudo rm - Rf ") and press RETURN. You will be asked to provide your admin password. It will not be echoed to the Terminal window so type carefully, then press RETURN again.

What, if anything, is in this folder? Have you followed all the sub-folders within the main folder? Is the main folder truly empty of any files?