Can I delete my iCloud storage after transferring the data into local file?

My icloud drive is full because i enabled desktop & documents. Its taking up too much space so i disabled documents & desktop so that i can transfer the files/documents to my local drive. My question is can i delete these files from the icloud drive once ive transferred them to a local file so that they free up space in my icloud drive? Also, since my storage is full, i cant copy all of my files at once and transfer them because i dont have enough space. So can i transfer and delete them in sections?