Describe the Bug

Hi, I noticed that setting trash: true does indeed remove items from the list when running something like GET /api/article with trash: true not set.

However, if article has a relationship to another collection such as writers (e.g. hasMany relationship field: writers, so response is: {writers: {docs: [{id: 1, name: 'some name'}, {id: 2, name: 'some other name'}]}}), the id of a trashed entry persists, and becomes: {writers: {docs: [1, {id: 2, name: 'some other name'}]}}

My initial expectation was that 1 wouldn't appear in the response at all and I would get: {writers: {docs: [{id: 2, name: 'some other name'}]}}

Link to the code that reproduces this issue

https://github.com/amroweh2/payload-trash-bug

Reproduction Steps

1. Create Article and Writer collections
2. Set the Article to have a hasMany relation to the Writer collection
3. Set the Writer collection to have trash: true

This has already bee setup in the repo attached, so by running pnpm run dev and hitting http://localhost:3000/api/article/1, notice that the writers associated to that article have the following structure:

"writers": [
1,
{
"id": 2,
"name": "some other name",
"updatedAt": "2026-03-20T23:43:06.224Z",
"createdAt": "2026-03-20T23:43:06.224Z",
"deletedAt": null
}
],

notice that the id = 1 is still returned

Which area(s) are affected?

area: core

Environment Info

Binaries:
  Node: 22.12.0
  npm: 10.9.0
  Yarn: N/A
  pnpm: 10.32.1
Relevant Packages:
  payload: 3.80.0
  next: 16.2.0
  @payloadcms/db-sqlite: 3.80.0
  @payloadcms/drizzle: 3.80.0
  @payloadcms/graphql: 3.80.0
  @payloadcms/next/utilities: 3.80.0
  @payloadcms/richtext-lexical: 3.80.0
  @payloadcms/translations: 3.80.0
  @payloadcms/ui/shared: 3.80.0
  react: 19.2.4
  react-dom: 19.2.4
Operating System:
  Platform: darwin
  Arch: arm64
  Version: Darwin Kernel Version 25.3.0: Wed Jan 28 20:51:28 PST 2026; root:xnu-12377.91.3~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T6041
  Available memory (MB): 24576
  Available CPU cores: 12