Zion Church founder Jin Mingri released from Chinese prison and arrives in Los Angeles

Jin Mingri released from prison and arrives in Los Angeles, family says

The founder of Beijing’s Zion Church, Jin Mingri, was released from prison in China and has traveled to Los Angeles, his family and the US-based group ChinaAid said on his arrival in the United States.

Jin, also known as Ezra Jin, had been detained after nationwide overnight raids in October that Christian groups described as one of the strictest recent crackdowns on religious activity in China, officials and monitoring groups reported.

His family thanked supporters and the Trump administration in a statement, saying they believed the outcome followed direct intervention by Chinese President Xi Jinping and expressing hope this signals a positive turn for people of faith in China and bilateral relations.

ChinaAid confirmed Jin’s arrival in Los Angeles and its founder Bob Fu welcomed the release, while noting that numerous religious practitioners remain detained in China, including eight members of Zion Church.

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a group of Western lawmakers including dozens of UK MPs, said it was “overjoyed” at the news, and US President Donald Trump had previously raised Jin’s detention directly with Xi during a state visit to Beijing in May.

Trump told reporters he had urged Xi to “strongly consider” the pastor, and also raised the case of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who was sentenced this year under the city’s national security law.

Jin founded Zion Church in 2007 with about 20 people; it expanded into one of China’s largest unregistered churches with an estimated network of 10,000 followers across 40 cities before being officially banned by the Chinese Communist Party in 2018.

The ban followed the church’s refusal to install government security cameras at its Beijing property, and many branch congregations have subsequently faced investigation and closure, rights groups said.

Authorities detained around thirty church leaders during the October raids, and a similar crackdown in January led to nine further detentions, according to reports from monitoring organizations and church sources.

The Chinese foreign ministry has not issued an official comment on Jin’s case.