The UK’s “extreme and secretive” citizenship-stripping powers are putting millions of British Muslims at risk of being deprived of their nationality, a new report has warned.

Research published by the Runnymede Trust and Reprieve on Thursday found that nine million people in the UK – approximately 13 per cent of the population – could be legally stripped of their citizenship at the home secretary’s discretion.

Both organisations warn that the “deprivation regime” now represents a systematic threat to Muslim communities, echoing the state’s discrimination against British nationals with familial links to the Caribbean in the Windrush scandal.

“The previous government stripped British trafficking victims of citizenship for political gain, and the current government has just expanded these extreme and secretive powers,” Reprieve’s Maya Foa told Middle East Eye.