In Texas he was offered a choice of three cities. How one immigrant ended up on a bus to Philadelphia.

Juan Carlos was living with other immigrants in a Texas border facility when an announcement came over the loudspeaker:

Buses were available to take them to Chicago, New York, or Philadelphia — for free. They could pick the city. Men in military fatigues asked him if he wanted to go, he said. He just had to sign a paper saying it was his decision to leave.

Juan Carlos had been in the country for about eight days, processed and released by immigration authorities after crossing into the United States and declaring he wanted asylum.

He decided to take a bus to Philadelphia, that perhaps a future awaited there. Conditions had propelled him out of his native Colombia, first to Ecuador, then going farther and farther north. There was nothing for him in Del Rio, Texas, a small border city about 150 miles west of San Antonio.

Only hours after hearing the announcement, he was gone from Texas and heading north.

Two days later, as the bus rolled into Philadelphia in the freezing, predawn darkness, Juan Carlos stared out the window, enchanted by a line of majestic, lighted buildings on a riverbank — Boathouse Row.

“I’m here looking for a new life,” said Juan Carlos, 28, who spoke to The Inquirer on Thursday at a city-run welcome center in North Philadelphia. “I just want to be able to support my family.”

Juan Carlos, who agreed to be interviewed if his surname was withheld, arrived among a contingent of 28 immigrant travelers. They landed near 30th Street Station on Wednesday, on a bus that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he sent here to bring relief to Texas border communities, and that Mayor Jim Kenney and local advocates derided as a cruel political stunt, played on immigrant families who are legally in the country.

Abbott boasted that he has delivered thousands of immigrants to Chicago, New York, and Washington — and now plans to send buses to Philadelphia too.

Kenney administration officials and local immigrant leaders provided a safe and caring welcome, offering food, water, shelter, and medical screenings even as they readied for more arrivals.

Nineteen people including Juan Carlos were taken to the welcome center while others rode on to destinations in different states. On Friday morning he and eight other adults, along with two children, remained at the site.

Only two people had said they planned to remain here permanently. Now there’s a third. Juan Carlos said the reception was so overwhelming that he wants to stay in Philadelphia.

“Since I embarked on this journey from my country, no one has received me as well,” he said.

“He’s very grateful,” said his attorney, Lilah Thompson, a staff lawyer with the Pennsylvania Immigrant Family Unity Project, which is part of Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia. “He feels like people really welcomed him — very good people.”

Juan Carlos crossed the border without permission, traversing the Rio Grande. But unlike others with whom he entered the country, he didn’t run, didn’t try to outdistance Border Patrol officers.

Instead, he said, as he crossed the line he spied a security camera, one of hundreds that are deployed to create a technological barrier. He walked over and stood in front of it, seeking to present himself to U.S. authorities.

He waited about two hours until immigration authorities arrived and took him into custody, he said.

His first words to them: I need asylum.

Most or all of the people bused to Philadelphia, originally from Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and elsewhere, are seeking the same protection, which can be offered to foreign nationals who cannot return home because of persecution. Asylum is a legal means to remain in the United States.

Approval is far from certain. But for Juan Carlos, it affords him a chance to make a case in federal Immigration Court that deportation could cause him to be hurt or killed. A hearing is scheduled for January.

In the interview, Juan Carlos would not discuss the factors that caused him to leave Colombia. He became visibly distressed when the topic was raised.

Thousands of migrants who arrive at the border apply for asylum each year. Each plea for relief is different, but no one leaves home, as the poet Warsan Shire wrote, unless home is the mouth of a shark.

At one point on his journey north, Juan Carlos thought death was at hand, after he ran out of food in a jungle. He kept going partly because people are depending on him — his mother sick with brain cancer and his son about to turn 5.

“It’s urgent that I help my mom,” he said, describing his eagerness to take any job in Philadelphia to earn money. In the past he’s worked handling field crops and at meat-processing plants.

He left Colombia about two years ago, first going to Ecuador. When living conditions worsened after about 18 months, he left that country too. He decided to try to go to the United States — and started walking.

He cut through rainforests and walked beside roads. He was robbed in Guatemala. Sometimes he traveled by bus or small boat, he and other migrants charged three times the local rate.

In a Venezuelan jungle he and his companions came across the body of a man. It appeared he had drowned. When their supplies ran out they went three days without food.

“I was scared,” Juan Carlos said. “A lot of us survived on water alone.”

He pushed away his fear by gazing at the photo of an adored cousin and remembering the words she spoke to him before he left: While the journey is uncertain, the sure thing is you have the strength to keep going.

Except for her picture he carried nothing sentimental. Weight is slowing, a hindrance, and he took the bare minimum. A backpack, two sets of clothes, repellents to ward off snakes and mosquitoes.

In this country, he said, he was first taken to an ICE processing facility, and when released, to live in a spare, larger structure in Del Rio. It had service windows that migrants could approach to select one of the three cities as a busing destination.

No one there was being detained. Some had money and bought plane tickets. Others opted for a bus ride.

Juan Carlos has no family in the United States. Until this week all he knew of Philadelphia was it was in Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, he stood outside the welcome center in worn sneakers, a jacket, and a blue knit cap, barely enough to defeat the mid-November wind. Across Luzerne Street stood a stark urban landscape, tall rows of transmission towers beside a sprawling parking lot and a line of cracked sidewalk.

The view, Juan Carlos said, looked beautiful to him.