The crc32cer NIF depends on Google's crc32c library, included as a git submodule under deps/crc32cer/external/crc32c. Mix doesn't automatically fetch git submodules when downloading dependencies, so the directory ends up empty.
Fix:
cd deps/crc32cer && git submodule update --init --recursive
cd ../..
mix deps.compile crc32cer --force