I can't delete some files from an external device because of permissions

If you can live with a FAT formatted stick then this may help

If you are using Linux file systems you need to understand filesystem ownership and permissions.

There is a lengthy article on the subject

Boiled down you need to mount the device - then change either the owner or the permissions on the stick’s filesystem. There is various tools and approaches to this but the dead simple one - which can be executed using a couple of commands in a terminal follows

Prerequisite - you know the device - e.g. it is listed by lsblk as /dev/sdy with one partition /dev/sdy1

Armed with the knowledge of your device address and partition number

Mount

$ sudo mount /dev/sdy1 /mnt

Assign world-wide read-write permissions to the any and all content of the stick

$ sudo chmod ugo-rwx /mnt -R

Unmount

$ sudo umount /dev/sdy1
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