China Frees Underground Pastor Detained Since October 2025 After Trump’s Intervention

China has released the founder of an underground church who has been detained since October 2025, his church and family confirmed to the newsmen on Sunday, after the United States President, Donald Trump raised his case with counterpart Xi Jinping.

Ezra Jin is the founder of Zion Church, one of China’s unregistered churches that some Christians choose to worship at instead of state-sanctioned ones regulated by the government.

Jin, also known by his Chinese name Mingri, was detained along with other church members on October 10, 2025 on “suspicion of the illegal use of information networks”.

Trump raised the clergy’s case when he visited Xi in May, and had said the Chinese President would “strongly consider” releasing him.

On Saturday, rights group ChinaAid said in a statement that Jin had arrived in Los Angeles after being released from detention in China.

The pastor was told by Chinese officials that his release “resulted from discussions between the U.S. President, Donald J. Trump and Chinese President, Xi Jinping and was presented as a goodwill gesture coinciding with America’s Independence Day”, the statement said.

“We thank God for this tremendous miracle,” Jin’s daughter Grace said.

“We hope this is a signal of a positive turn for people of faith in China and relations between our two nations.”

Her statement thanked Trump and his administration “for their tremendous leadership” and said they knew “Mingri’s release could not have happened without the direct intervention from [Chinese President] Xi Jinping”.

While celebrating Mingri’s freedom, ChinaAid noted that eight other jailed pastors and coworkers from Zion Church, priests, bishops, house church Christians, Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, and other prisoners of conscience “remain unjustly imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party”.

“We respectfully call on President Trump and his administration to continue making religious freedom and the release of all prisoners of faith a top priority in every engagement with Beijing,” ChinaAid said.

China’s ministry of foreign affairs has not officially commented on his case.

China’s ruling Communist Party has historically regarded organised religion with suspicion, and under Xi, has tightened scrutiny of unofficial groups.

Authorities have been cracking down on unregistered churches in recent months.

In June an Early Rain Covenant Church service in southwestern Sichuan province was raided, and two leaders detained.

That followed the detention in January of several other leading members of Early Rain.

The same week, Yayang church in eastern Zhejiang province was scaffolded and had its cross removed.

Zion Church was founded in 2007 in Beijing with about 20 worshippers.

It grew to 1,500 members before shuttering in 2018 under pressure from Chinese authorities.

The church maintained an online presence that flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a following across 40 Chinese cities.

Jin’s family relocated abroad after 2018 but he returned to China to be with the church, afterwards facing a travel ban.

He has not seen most of his family, including two young sons, for more than seven years, his daughter told the newsmen last year.