WASHINGTON – A pastor of a prominent underground church who was detained in China in October has been released, less than two months after U.S. President Donald Trump brought up his case when meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, according to rights advocates.
Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, of the underground Zion Church, arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday, and “is finally reunited with his family,” Frances Hui of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation wrote on X.
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The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a group of Western lawmakers, also reported his release and shared a photo of the pastor with his daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, both smiling.
Jin’s case gained attention after Trump, when wrapping up his state visit to Beijing in May, said he raised the issue of the pastor's release with Xi and that the Chinese leader said he would give serious consideration to it.
A statement from the family said the release happened very suddenly. It thanked Trump and said they know 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 statement said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jin was detained with 17 other church leaders in October in one of China’s largest crackdowns on a single church in decades, raising worries over Beijing’s escalation in curtailing religious freedom.
The Zion Church is among the largest churches that are unregistered with the Chinese authorities, defying restrictions from the officially atheist Communist Party requiring believers to worship only in registered congregations.
“My father started Zion in order to worship freely in a church that put God as the sole head of our church, like many faithful Christians everywhere,” his daughter Grace Jin Drexel, who lives in the United States, told a congressional committee in November.
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Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.