Artboard from illustrator is getting imported after converting layers to vector shape

Hi everyone,

I'm importing my Illustrator files into After Effects and converting my layers to shapes to animate them. However, every time I do this, I get an unwanted outline around the layers, which seems to correspond to the Illustrator artboard. I’ve already tried importing them as "Composition - Retain Layer Sizes" to avoid this, but the outline still shows up after conversion.

In the "Contents" section of each converted layer in After Effects, there's no visible layer that represents this artboard border, so I'm not sure where it's coming from.

Any ideas on how to fix this and get clean vector shapes without the artboard outline?

Thanks in advance!