President Trump told reporters Thursday he would raise the detention of Christian pastor Ezra Jin with Chinese President Xi Jinping when the two leaders meet in Beijing next week, a commitment that brought Jin's pregnant daughter to tears on a Washington, D.C., metro train.
Grace Drexel, Jin's daughter, said she was riding home from dinner when she heard the president's remarks. She missed several stops.
The pledge marks the first time Trump has publicly addressed Jin's case and comes as the State Department works behind the scenes on at least two high-profile American detentions in China, Jin's and that of Dawn Michelle Hunt, a Chicago native who has spent a dozen years in Guangdong Women's Prison. Both families are now pressing the president to use his upcoming face-to-face with Xi to bring their loved ones home, the New York Post reported.
Ezra Jin founded Zion Church in Beijing in 2007. It grew into one of China's largest underground house churches, a congregation that refused to register with the Chinese Communist Party and submit to state oversight of its worship. Religious practice in China is legal but tightly controlled by the government, and churches that operate outside that control face escalating pressure.
By 2018, that pressure had become a full campaign. Jin and his family moved to the United States. But Jin returned to China later that year, leaving his family behind. He was arrested in October, part of what authorities and monitoring groups describe as a sweeping crackdown on unregistered Christian congregations.
The scope of that crackdown is significant. AP News reported that Jin was detained at his home in Beihai, Guangxi, along with dozens of other church leaders across Beijing and at least five other provinces. Those detained may face charges of "illegal dissemination of religious content via the internet," according to Zion Church pastor Sean Long. The church had grown from roughly 1,500 members in 2018 to possibly 5,000 or more, with over 100 worship sites in around 40 cities, growth fueled partly by online services during COVID.
"This is a brutal violation of freedom of religion, which is written into the Chinese constitution. We want our pastors to be released immediately," Long told AP.
A document provided by Jin's daughter indicated that nearly 30 Zion Church pastors and workers were detained or went missing across multiple Chinese cities, Fox News reported. Drexel described the roundup in stark terms: "One after another, they were also taken, detained. Like, they were saying that there were people outside their doors, and then one at a time they were taken into custody."
The family has not heard from Jin in some time. His main lawyer had his license permanently revoked, and the law firm was dismantled, "voluntarily," Drexel said, with audible skepticism. Other lawyers in China, she added, have become targets of the government.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and several lawmakers have called for Jin's release and criticized China for targeting Christians. The Trump administration has gone further than words. The State Department publicly condemned the CCP's detention of Zion Church leaders and demanded their immediate release.
"This crackdown further demonstrates how the CCP exercises hostility towards Christians who reject Party interference in their faith and choose to worship at unregistered house churches," the State Department said.
Drexel, who lives in Washington, D.C., is expecting her third child in four weeks. The timing carries a painful symmetry. A week before her father was detained, the family told him about the pregnancy.
"We're really grateful that we are actually able to tell my dad about the baby before he was in prison. It's like this baby has kind of walked through it all with us since the beginning."
When Trump said Thursday that he would look into her father's case, Drexel allowed herself a measure of cautious optimism. Trump has made the return of detained Americans a priority. As of May 2026, his administration has secured the release of over 100 American hostages and detainees held abroad, a record he referenced Thursday.
"I've gotten a lot of people out of different countries, including China," Trump told reporters. "So we'll take a look at that."
That track record is precisely what gives Drexel hope. "This president has just a remarkable way of doing things that most people say are impossible," she said. "If anyone, this president might be able to bring back my father."
Trump has been active on multiple fronts in recent weeks. He called for a temporary federal gas tax suspension to address rising pump prices, and his administration has confronted threats and political hostility from several directions simultaneously.
Dawn Michelle Hunt's case is older, grimmer, and in some ways more desperate. The Chicago native was arrested in 2014 after what her family describes as a trip that went horribly wrong.
Hunt spent a week in Hong Kong, then traveled on to mainland China. She accepted additional travel to Australia and was given designer bags. At the airport, waiting for her flight, police approached her. Sewn into the lining of those bags were several kilos of methamphetamines.
A Chinese court sentenced Hunt to death. That sentence was later commuted to life in prison. She has been held in Guangdong Women's Prison ever since, more than a dozen years.
Her brother, Tim Hunt, a retired police officer and the eldest of three Hunt children, told the Post he visited his sister two years ago. He was given an hour with her. A Chinese official sat in the room, taking notes.
"She did not look too good at all. It looked like two different people."
Hunt has developed fibroids and tumors in her uterus, including what Tim described as "a tumor the size of a grapefruit" on her right side. She has refused Chinese medical treatment out of fear. The health problems have left her unable to work, and in China's prison system, that carries a compounding penalty.
"In the China system, it's rehabilitation through labor. So she has not been able to get time knocked off of her sentence," Tim Hunt said. "Usually when you work, it goes from life to maybe 20 to 12. She can't work."
Hunt earns few points in the prison system and uses what she gets for phone calls to her family.
The State Department has asked Xi's government to release Hunt on humanitarian grounds, citing serious health issues. A spokesperson confirmed the department is providing consular assistance and "unwaveringly advocates for the health and welfare of all US citizens detained in China."
The political climate around Trump has grown increasingly hostile in recent months, with heated rhetoric from congressional Democrats and even an attempted assassination case that remains in the courts.
Tim Hunt's appeal to Trump is rooted in something more personal than diplomacy. His father, Gene Hunt, spent years working to free Dawn. Gene died on January 25. Before he passed, Tim made him a promise.
"My dad just passed away, January 25, and I made a promise to him to bring her home. My dad said, from the last time I talked to him, as long as my number one is on that I'm at peace."
Tim, the "number one" his father referenced, said he believes Trump understands the weight of that kind of obligation.
"He'd be fighting tooth and nail for his kids. I gotta fight tooth and nail for my dad, who would fight tooth and nail for his kids," Tim said of Trump.
His direct request was plain: "If it was one of his family members, one of his sons or one of his daughters, he would do whatever it took, whatever is necessary, to bring him home. That's his makeup, that's his ethos. And I'm just asking that if he could for me, just ask President Xi to bring her home."
Meanwhile, the broader pattern of partisan attempts to undermine the administration's credibility continues on the domestic front, even as the president prepares for one of the most consequential diplomatic meetings of his second term.
The two cases, Jin and Hunt, are different in their details but share a common thread. Both involve American families who have watched a loved one disappear into China's opaque legal system with little recourse. Both families have turned to the same president, and the same upcoming meeting, as their best remaining chance.
China Aid founder Bob Fu framed the broader persecution bluntly: "Xi Jinping has waged a war against God's Church, such as the Zion Church, that he will never win."
The State Department called on the CCP "to immediately release the detained church leaders and to allow all people of faith, including members of house churches, to engage in religious activities without fear of retribution."
Whether Xi will listen when Trump raises these cases in Beijing remains an open question. But the families are clear-eyed about one thing: years of quiet diplomacy and bureaucratic process have not brought their loved ones home. A direct presidential ask, at the table, face to face, is something different.
Grace Drexel called it a "glimmer of hope." Tim Hunt called it a promise to a dying father. For both families, next week in Beijing is the moment that matters, and despite the dangers and distractions surrounding this president, they are counting on him to deliver.
Beijing has had years to do the right thing. It hasn't. Now the ask goes straight to the top, and the families praying for an answer have earned it.
