BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Facing a legal deadline, the Trump Administration said Monday it would partially fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. But what does a partial funding mean? And when could recipients start seeing money put on their special debit cards?

According to the Associated Press, the partial funding will come from a federal emergency fund.

SNAP, when fully-funded, costs the federal government about $8 billion a month. The emergency fund has a little more than half of that, $4.65 billion.

In a court filing Monday, the Trump Administration says it could take “a few weeks to up to several months” to get money deposited onto SNAP users debit cards.

SNAP isn’t being paid for through normal channels because of the federal government shutdown. Tuesday will tie the record for the longest shutdown in American history. The longest ever was in 2018 into the beginning of 2019, during the last Trump Administration.

Dawn Godshall is the CEO of Community Action Lehigh Valley, which runs Second Harvest Food Bank.

She says the uncertainty of not knowing if SNAP benefits will be on their card is turning from confusion to panic.

“Most Americans, after a few hours of not eating, are looking for food. So can you imagine families with children who have to send those children to bed hungry? That is the impact that this is having on our country,” said Godshall.

Second Harvest distributes food to more than 200 agency partners. Recently, some people have been showing up directly at their Hanover warehouse, looking for food.

“We had a woman bring five children to Second Harvest Food Bank last week, and she was just in tears, not knowing how she was going to feed her family. That’s not typical,” recalled Godshall.

Godshall says there are misconceptions about the SNAP program.

“These are not just line items in a budget. The fact that there’s this misconception that some people don’t want to fund SNAP because they think that undocumented immigrants are receiving the benefits, is just not accurate,” said Godshall.

Godshall says corporate and individual monetary donations are increasing, all while November payments have already been delayed for millions of people.

It’s not clear exactly how much beneficiaries will receive, nor how quickly they will see value show up on the debit cards they use to buy groceries.