• Able to understand and voluntarily sign an informed consent form

• Age \>= 18 years at the time of signing the informed consent form

• Able to adhere to the study visit schedule and other protocol requirements

• Biopsy-proven, measurable, stage IB-IVB relapsed or refractory cutaneous T-cell lymphoma after 1 prior line of systemic therapy

⁃ Note: extracorporeal photopheresis will be considered a systemic therapy for this study

• Patients with large cell transformation of cutaneous T cell lymphoma are eligible

• Patients with adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) of any stage and any subtypes. Patient must have had at least one standard chemotherapy and measurable disease at the time of enrollment

• Patients who relapsed after autologous or allogeneic stem cell transplant are eligible

• All cancer therapy, including radiation, topical steroid, and chemotherapy must have been discontinued at least 1 week or 3 half-lives whichever is the longest prior to treatment in this study. The only exceptions are participants who are symptomatic from their skin lesions and have been on corticosteroids for prolonged periods of time (\> 60 days) without change. These patients may continue use of either systemic steroids (equivalent to \< 10 mg per day of prednisone) or topical steroids if the frequency and dosage steroids has not changed for 21 days prior to the study. These participants should continue on the same dose of systemic/topical steroid throughout the study period unless they achieve a complete response at which time steroids can be tapered or discontinued. Patients are allowed to continue any medications with known activity in T cell lymphomas at the pre-enrollment doses for conditions other than T cell lymphomas (ie, steroids for sarcoidosis), as long as there is evidence of T cell lymphoma progression while patients were on these agents

• Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status of =\< 1 at study entry

• Absolute neutrophil count \>= 1000/mm\^3

• Platelet count \>= 50,000/mm\^3

• Total bilirubin =\< 2 x upper limit of normal (ULN)

• Aspartate aminotransferase (AST) (serum glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase \[SGOT\]) and Alanine Aminotransferase (ALT) (serum glutamic pyruvic transaminase \[SGPT\]) =\< 3 x ULN

⁃ AST (SGOT) and ALT (SGPT) =\< 5 x ULN in patients with documented hepatic involvement by lymphoma

• Calculated creatinine clearance \>= 50 ml/min (by the Crockroft-Gault equation)

• Disease free of prior malignancies for \>= 2 years with exception of currently treated basal cell, squamous cell carcinoma of the skin, or carcinoma in situ of the cervix or breast. Patients with early stage of prostate cancer under clinical surveillance without therapy are eligible. Patients with B-cell lymphomas treated with curative intent, and in remission for at least 2 years, may be in included (after discussion with principal investigator \[PI\])

• Negative serum pregnancy test at the time of enrollment for females of childbearing potential

• Life expectancy \>= 90 days