The operation can’t be completed because the item “ " is in use.

Ok this suggests the system's "QuickLook" file previewing feature is not working properly. When you are accessing the folder it is generating previews of the documents in it, but is not releasing the documents. Do you have any quick-look plugins on your system? Go to the /Macintosh HD/Library/QuickLook/ folder and see if any items are listed in there. If so then move them to the desktop temporarily and restart the system to see if the problem persists.

You can also check the QuickLook plugin folder in your home directory by holding the Option key and choosing "Library" from the "Go" menu. Then likewise locate the QuickLook folder and remove any ".qlgenerator" files you find in there, followed by restarting and trying again.

William @ Quebec wrote:

I Also can delet files from Terminal command?

You can, but you will likely run into the same filesystem lock issues and get an "operation not permitted" error.

Does the same error happen if you log out of your current user account and then log into another account on your system (make sure your first account is fully logged out when testing--you can create a new test user account in the Users & Groups system preferences).

Does it only happen with the one hard drive, or does it happen with any USB drive you use?

That suggests the drive's formatting and setup are likely the culprit, regardless of what Disk Utility says when you run a verification/repair routine on it. The only way to address this issue would be to format the drive and set it up again from scratch. You can use your Mac to mirror the contents of the drive to another one and back it up, and then format it using Disk Utility. After doing this, copy the files back to it and try again.

I'm having this same issue when I'm copying a series of files from an SD card to a Lacie drive. sometimes it give me this error right away, or the last time it copied two files, and then gave me the error. It's done this on my Macbook pro as well as my iMac on the same Lacie drive.

thx

Today is 10/24/2016

This happened to me all I had to do was eject my backup drive and it deleted immediately. If your files are on another drive that is connected to your MAC then naturally it is working and this operation will not be allowed.