A prominent underground church pastor who was locked up in China last October has been freed, arriving on American soil just weeks after President Donald Trump brought up his case directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to human rights advocates.
Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, who leads the underground Zion Church, touched down in Los Angeles on Saturday and is now back with his loved ones. Frances Hui of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation announced the news on X, writing that he “is finally reunited with his family.”
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an organization made up of Western lawmakers, also confirmed the pastor’s release and shared a photograph showing Jin alongside his daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, with both of them smiling.
Jin’s situation drew widespread attention after Trump, while concluding his state visit to Beijing in May, publicly stated that he had raised the matter of the pastor’s release with Xi. Trump said the Chinese leader indicated he would give the request serious consideration.
Jin had been taken into custody along with 17 other church leaders in October, in what rights groups described as one of the most sweeping crackdowns on a single church China has seen in decades. The mass detention sparked alarm among advocates who warned it signaled a growing effort by Beijing to restrict religious freedom within its borders.
