Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, leader of one of China’s most prominent underground churches, has been released from detention and arrived in Los Angeles to reunite with his family.
His release came less than two months after President Donald Trump raised the pastor’s case directly with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a state visit to Beijing in May.
Frances Hui of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation confirmed the news on X, writing that Jin “is finally reunited with his family.”
Jin and 17 other leaders of the underground Zion Church were detained in October, marking one of China’s largest crackdowns on a single church in decades.
The mass detention raised significant concerns among religious freedom advocates about an escalating pattern of government suppression targeting unregistered congregations across China.
A statement from Jin’s family said his release happened very quickly and credited Trump’s intervention, saying the release “could not have happened without Xi’s direct intervention.”
“We hope this is a signal of a positive turn for people of faith in China and relations between our two nations,” the family statement read.
Trump told reporters aboard his flight home from Beijing that Xi had agreed to “strongly consider the pastor,” signaling the personal nature of the diplomatic exchange.
Trump also raised the case of imprisoned Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai during the same meeting, though Xi indicated that Lai’s situation “would be a tough one” to resolve.
Lai, a 78-year-old former clothing magnate and publisher of a Hong Kong tabloid critical of Beijing, received a 20-year prison sentence in February.
Rights advocates welcomed Jin’s freedom but quickly turned attention to those still behind bars, with Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch noting on X that “at least 8 members of Zion Church remain detained in China.”
The Zion Church is among the largest unregistered house churches in China, operating in defiance of government requirements that believers worship only in state-approved congregations.
China’s ruling Communist Party, which is officially atheist, has long viewed organized religion as a potential challenge to its authority, and under Xi has pushed to “Sinicize” religion by demanding loyalty to the party.
Jin’s daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, who lives in the United States, told a congressional committee in November that her father founded Zion “in order to worship freely in a church that put God as the sole head of our church, like many faithful Christians everywhere.”
Jin had relocated his family to the U.S. after authorities first targeted Zion Church in 2018, but later chose to return to China despite the considerable personal risks involved.
His daughter revealed last fall that she had not seen her father in six years, underscoring the human toll of China’s sustained pressure on unregistered religious communities.
