Reusing Apple ID Issues

I'm trying to reuse my email in a new Apple ID, let's call it emailone@gmail.com. Knowing that this email would not be available, I first swapped the primary email to a different account, which we'll call emailtwo@gmail.com, and removed the now secondary emailone@gmail.com as well. At this point I delete my old Apple ID using emailtwo@gmail.com as a stand in, the idea being that I will be able to continue the original email. A friend swore up and down he was able to do it before. But for whatever reason, I'm getting an error which states that emailone@gmail.com can not be used while creating the new account. Any thoughts?