In the wake of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) latest widespread crackdown on a Christian house church and the imprisonment of almost two dozen pastors and church leaders, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are urging the Trump administration to address China’s religious freedom violations by putting forward legislation to hold CCP officials accountable through a variety of economic sanctions.

On October 9, Xi Jinping’s communist regime launched a “sweeping, coordinated operation across nine provinces and municipalities” and arrested 22 pastors and other workers associated with the Zion Church, a 10,000-member independent evangelical “house” church that has grown exponentially since its founding in 2007. Because Zion Church operated without state approval, it came under increasing scrutiny and was officially banned by the CCP in 2018 after church elders refused to install security cameras on its property. Despite the government’s shuttering of its main church, Zion continued to meet at over 100 smaller locations across 40 Chinese cities, and it continued to grow during the COVID pandemic lockdowns by offering livestream services.

As noted by Grace Jin Drexel, daughter of jailed Zion head pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, the scale of the CCP’s October 9 crackdown on a Christian church was not seen in China in decades.

“Zion Church was raided from nine different cities, and they detained up to 30 people in the beginning,” she detailed during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Tuesday. “Some folks have since been released or have been put on bail, but currently there are 22 [still detained], including my father. And recently they’ve detained another individual, so now there are 23 detained from all across China, and they’re all being placed in a detention center in Beihai, a city in Guangxi province, which is where my father is currently living.

As Drexel went on to observe, Zion was likely targeted due to the outsized influence it was able to create from its livestream model.

“This has been seen as one of the largest crackdowns of Chinese underground churches in the last 40 years, and we think that this is definitely an escalation of [hostilities],” she explained. “[T]hey are all being charged with a very recently legislated policy under illegal dissemination of religious information online. … [M]y father has been preaching his sermons on Zoom, and having this hybrid model in which people meet both online and offline, we were able to reach up to 10,000 people, often daily, for their daily devotionals. Because of the church’s influence, Zion Church has been subject to this attack.”

U.S. lawmakers like Senator Ted Budd (R-N.C.) are taking action in response to the Xi Jinping regime’s suppression by introducing the Combatting the Persecution of Religious Groups in China Act, which would place sanctions on “any CCP official who is responsible for or directly carries out violations of religious freedom.”

“We need to give the State Department and specifically Secretary Rubio … all the tools that he needs to work on this issue,” he explained during Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.” “[We need] to elevate the issue so that it’s not forgotten. It’s one of our fundamental rights. We don’t want to take it for granted, and it’s so important for the stability of the world that we want to make sure that the State Department keeps it front and center when we’re going into trade negotiations, like with China right now.” President Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday in South Korea to focus on trade negotiations.

“I’m confident that we’re going to elevate [religious freedom] so that it does become part of the conversation,” Budd predicted. “If you look at what China has done in the last six or seven years, it’s actually one of the worst crackdowns in recent days that they’ve done since 2018, so they definitely need to be called on the carpet for this, and it needs to be part of the broader context when they want to trade and sell their goods in the U.S.”

Budd went on to emphasize that the sanctions will not affect ordinary Chinese citizens, but are specifically targeted at government officials who have participated in religious repression.

“We’re going after the individuals that are putting this persecution forth,” he underscored. We want to target the individuals that Xi is leaning on for this persecution and make sure that they think twice before they do this. Sometimes this isn’t just at the direction of Xi, but it’s also individuals in the different regions around China. … It gives [Rubio] the tools that he needs so that you can target individuals — if this is banking, if this is travel related. It’s a whole swath of tools that the State Department can use.”

Budd concluded by pointing out that Xi’s ultimate aim is to undercut the U.S. by any means necessary. “[Xi’s] design is to end U.S. hegemony, which has created so much health and prosperity and stability for the world. But he wants to replace that. That leads to persecution. It leads to oppression. It leads to instability around the world. And so I think [sanctions are] good not just for them, it’s good for us, and it’s good for the rest of the world.”

In the meantime, Drexel reported that her father and the other church leaders who have been arrested are not being treated well by the Chinese government.

“My father has severe Type 2 diabetes, and so we are really concerned about his health, along with several others that are detained,” she lamented. “They are relatively elderly and have some different health problems. They will not allow my father to use the medication that the doctors have prescribed to him. We are very concerned about their sleeping situation. [They were] apparently put in a room with more than 30 others with no beds, and they’re all expected to sleep in a room all together. … They’re not allowing any families to visit. … We plead that Christians from all across the world will be able to pray with us and to advocate for my father’s situation.”