Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, leader of one of China's largest underground churches, has been released from detention and reunited with his family in the United States, less than two months after U.S. President Donald Trump personally raised his case with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, his family and rights advocates said Saturday, according to The Associated Press.
Jin arrived in Los Angeles and is "finally reunited with his family," Frances Hui of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation wrote on X, the AP reported.
Jin and 17 other leaders of the unregistered Zion Church were detained last October in one of the largest crackdowns on a single congregation in China in decades. In a statement, the family said the release came very quickly, thanked Trump and said it 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," the statement said.
The case drew high-level attention after Trump, returning from a state visit to Beijing, told reporters he had pressed Xi on both Jin and jailed Hong Kong pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai. Trump said Xi indicated he would "strongly consider" the pastor, but signaled Lai's case would be more difficult. Lai, 78, was sentenced to 20 years in February.
Advocates welcomed the release while noting others remain held. "At least 8 members of Zion Church remain detained in China," Human Rights Watch's Maya Wang wrote on X. "They should all be freed."
The U.S. State Department, under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, condemned the arrests at the time and demanded Jin's immediate release, noting that his wife and three children are American citizens. Jin, 56, a former Tiananmen Square protester who studied at Fuller Theological Seminary, founded Zion Church in 2007; authorities first shuttered its Beijing sanctuary in 2018, pushing the congregation online, where services reached up to 10,000 worshippers.
As Christian Daily International reported in February, Jin's daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, told the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington that she feared she might never see her father again, describing how he missed her wedding and had never met his grandchildren. She said Jin had brought his family to the U.S. amid the 2018 crackdown but chose to return to China despite the risks.
