Linking rig only works once?

I hope this is the right forum to post this in. I linked a character with his rig into my scene, made a proxy rig, and then realized something weird was occurring with the SSS material (it worked in the original file but not on the linked model - both on CPU for rendering). So I deleted the linked object in my scene hoping that by relinking it things might fix themselves. Unfortunately no matter what I do that linked file will not come into my scene. It’s like it knows it was there already at one point so it’s not going to give it to me again. Am I missing something? Something I should have done when deleting the character/rig first?

…the datablocks for the rig and the model are all still present in the file. I can’t seem to delete them even when saving and reopening the file.

Got it! There was still a group datablock which, I think, needed to be unlinked before the object would be unlinked. I unlinked the Group, saved and reopened, offending datablocks gone. I was able to relink my character.