Deleting an AWS Account that has resources with deletion protection

When you delete an AWS account that contains resources with deletion protection enabled (such as Aurora DB clusters or EKS clusters), the deletion protection on individual resources does not prevent the account deletion process.

When you close an AWS account, AWS initiates a process to delete all resources in the account regardless of their deletion protection settings. This means you don't need to manually disable deletion protection or remove protected resources before closing your account.

The deletion protection feature is designed to prevent accidental deletion of specific resources during normal operations within an active account. It serves as a safeguard against unintended actions by users or automation processes that might attempt to delete critical resources. For example, with Aurora DB clusters, deletion protection prevents accidental deletion of the cluster and its data volume during day-to-day operations.

Similarly, for EKS clusters, deletion protection requires explicit disablement before a cluster can be deleted, providing an additional safety control for critical environments during normal operations.

However, these protections operate at the resource level and are overridden by the account closure process, which is designed to remove all resources regardless of their individual protection settings.
Sources
Deleting Aurora DB clusters and DB instances - Amazon Aurora
What's New at AWS - Cloud Innovation & News
Protect EKS clusters from accidental deletion - Amazon EKS