first RE may not be empty?

[Henry Smith, Jr.]

I currently setup a script that will update my userlist (for mailing)
and modify it accordingly to those users that have been removed/added
that day.

The script then emails me with the changes. I recently added to this by
having it take the results from comm and setting quotas for the newly
added users with
cat /root/scripts/newtoday | awk '{ print "edquota -p protouser " $1}' |
bash

What I am now attempting to do is have additional results from comm
display the removed users and have it remove the entry from my
/etc/alaises file and rebuild the aliases file.
Problem is that is doesn''t work

cat ./names_removed | awk '{ print "sed '/"$1"/d' ./myfile >
./myfile.new "}' | bash

error:
first RE may not be empty

Any help on why this isn't working would be appreciated. I've been at
this for a few days.. even tried grep -v with no success.

please include a CC to me personally.

BTW: I am sure that there are easier ways to do this, possibly using sed
solely with a for loop, but I am not that familiar with for loops,
therefore I am using what I feel most comfortable with. TIA