How to delete “recently accessed files downloaded to my device” but KEEP them in iCloud?!?!?!

Sorry that was so long, I just wanted to provide ALL of the details, bc I feel like there are soooo many questions on here where you (or at least I) think pertain, but then when people [start] replying and the OP comments back and more details are provided, you realize that it’s actually not your problem, or related to the info you were looking for. Also, instead of posting a separate question, which I wasn’t planning on doing, I figured if anyone happens to have any knowledge or info on my other related issue of devices not turning back on bc there’s not enough storage/memory, I—and possibly anyone else who also is looking for or just interested in that info—could benefit from that too.

And on that front, I was told by Apple support that when you boot your device into recovery mode, where it says to plug into a computer, when you are connected to a computer, apparently you can choose to restore it OR update it. And if you are able to successfully update it, then no settings would change and you wouldn’t lose anything.

Actually, here is the message, I just found it:

Apologies for the delayed response, but we'd certainly like to provide some clarification about your options. For an iPad Pro that turns on but gets stuck during startup, you would need to boot it to recovery mode while connected to a computer, then choose to update or restore it. If you're successfully able to update it this way, your current settings and content would be preserved. If that doesn't work, we definitely understand your hesitancy to restore, especially with so many photos stored only on your iPad Pro, but restoring may be the only path forward. You can find guidance on that process here under "If your iPad turns on but gets stuck during startup:" https://apple.co/3oXmjfo

My brain is very literal, and so I’m not sure if by syncing them to iCloud you mean saving them to iCloud. From the rest of your comment it sounds like that’s what you’re referring to, and if that’s the case, I’m not interested in saving my photos to iCloud. I don’t like having them there—I don’t trust it, I don’t like that ALL photos are on ALL devices (I have over 30,000 on my iPad, well, had o guess), and when using a family members device who has them saved to iCloud, and actually with my own iPad bc when it needed to be updated and I said it could remove apps and then put them back (which I have a big problem with bc besides what happened to me, how do we know they won’t remove an app no longer available, so that it won’t be able to be put back) alllllll of my Photos+Videos were moved to iCloud even though I did NOT select or approve that, and when trying to send a video to my mom there were so many issues, and the video didn’t actually load to send – it was like a link or something? I can’t remember, but I didn’t like it. So while I know that you can just save them to iCloud, that’s really not the I’m looking for.

As for your last sentence, the data was already deleted from the device and saved to iCloud as a file, since the items saved to iCloud are not supposed to take up space on your device. That’s like literally one of the main points of iCloud. My problem is that it says, “recently accessed files are automatically downloaded to your device for quick access” – which is outrageous to me and means then, that I can’t access a large amount of my iCloud files at all bc there’s not enough memory for them to be downloaded, so what WTH good is iCloud??