With soft deletion the records are 'deleted' by defining this in a model like this:
class Model extends BaseModel
{
protected $table = 'semesters';
protected $primaryKey = 'id';
use SoftDeletes;
const CREATED_AT = 'pcdate';
const UPDATED_AT = 'pmdate';
const DELETED_AT = 'pddate';
So when you delete a record the 'pddate' field will be filled with the datetime at the time of deletion.
To also get soft deleted models:
$trashedAndNotTrashed = Model::withTrashed()->get();
Only soft deleted models in your results:
$onlySoftDeleted = Model::onlyTrashed()->get();