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This article sets out from the fundamentals of psychoanalysis to examine clinical political strategies used with immigrants newly arrived in São Paulo, Brazil, following ordeals of forced migration and violence. The article criticizes the use of the concept of trauma to characterize immigrants and refugees, in so far as this diagnosis excludes both the political dimension at the basis of the violent events (Fassin, 2009), the dimension of the subject’s choice, and the subject’s ability to process and to reassume its subjective and political position. We use Lacan’s theory (1973–1974) to establish the difference between the violent event and the dimension of the trauma as a ‘hole [ trou]’ articulating anguish and desire within its own time of ‘afterwardsness’, a concept which provides key elements for thinking through the tactics and strategy of clinical intervention in such situations.